Medium plans to pair writers with brands. How will this be disclosed? Why would a blogger want to be "paired" with a brand?
When I wrote at Wired they had a party where editorial people such as myself were introduced to advertisers. It gave me the willies. What was supposed to happen here? Was I supposed to all of a sudden like your PC clone? Just because you pay to run an ad in Wired?
I don't like the whole idea of Medium, it's not providing a service we actually need. When you put your writing in there now in addition to questioning your motives re flow, now do we have to wonder how the pay you're getting from your paired brand is affecting what you say and don't say?
The other day I saw an employee of Amazon say, on Facebook, that a TV series on Amazon that I thought was horribly mediocre was great. I didn't feel it was appropriate for me to say what I thought of the series. The guy is just earning his paycheck I thought. But I thought less of him, esp since his job has nothing to do with Amazon's TV efforts.
And btw, disclosing brand connections isn't enough. Because even if you don't have them, how do we know you're not trying to get them? There are so few dollars available here, why sell yourself out so cheap?
Here's how insidious the whole thing is. Recently I started mirroring my posts from Scripting News on Medium. I noticed that one of my pieces was recommended by Evan Williams. I suppose this is like getting a Like from Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook. I tried not to notice what it was about, but I couldn't help it, and now I have the thought in my head "If I write about X, I might get a lot more flow." That's pure poison. I've never taken ads on my blog. I have no interest in the few cents per day it might yield. But now all of a sudden the fact that my writing is tied into a potential business model has colored it.