On Facebook, Michael Markman says: "Meanwhile, notice the Jedi mind trick of linking Medium to Facebook as though they are peers. How many users does each have? How much time do those users spend on each?"

To which I reply: "Yeah it worked for the first few years. Medium has been around since 2012 as has his ambition to take on Facebook. He makes the web his competition, knowing the web doesn't have a marketing budget or spokesperson quotable by the tech press, to rebut his claims. But it played out and he lost. Medium is getting all the spam now that you'd predict it would get. It's a place where people go for exposure. The ones who get it are the ones who figure out how to game the system. It's a never-ending battle. He lost it."