UPDATE:

Medium has put a date on it. As of April 1, 2025 “meta stories” aka writing about Medium on Medium is no longer eligible to go behind the paywall.

Medium said, initially, if they catch wind of meta stories behind paywall, they’ll reach out and ask you to remove it yourself. They’re encouraging writers to do it without being asked, and they thanked everyone who was proactive in doing so following the announcement in February about the change .

So how exactly does Medium define a meta story?  As one “primarily focused on Medium, the Medium Partner program, or the mechanics of Medium.”

Medium said it has discovered that stories about Medium are not of wide general interest on the platform “…Despite potential short-term financial gains in your earnings from other Partners [reading your meta stories], they can have long-term negative impact on your audience. You don’t want to limit your reach by being muted or blocked by any potential readers,” Medium said in a recent update.

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Original post:

Medium writers who haven’t opened your mail, be advised, there’s yet another change on the platform that could potentially affect your income.

For those of you who write about Medium on Medium, the days of getting paid for it are coming to an end. At least if the powers-that-be have their way.

In its February newsletter, Medium explained it’s trying to keep those “meta stories” out of readers’ feeds except in cases when readers asked to follow them.

What are meta stories, you may ask. “Posts about the Medium Partner Program, making money on Medium, or Boost…”

“We often hear from our members that these kinds of stories aren’t the ones they want to read, much less pay for,” the message stated.

That’s an interesting assessment given that pieces about Medium often performed very well and had high levels of engagement.

“You’re free to write meta stories, we just don’t want Partner Program funds going to them…” the message continued.

And to keep that from happening, this month, March 2025, Medium is supposed to start contacting writers who put “meta stories” behind the paywall, and then begin removing them.

That’s right–being free to write about Medium on Medium will literally mean writing for free, if the platform has its way. Medium doesn’t want those type of stories behind the paywall.

Like other platforms, Medium is on board with the trend of continually switching things up to throw writers’ earnings off course. Of course, that’s never the stated reason. The changes are always done under the guise of improving the experience for somebody, somewhere.

Not long before this announcement, Medium announced editors at publications were getting the ability to feature stories. Then, “our system will recommend these stories more highly,” wrote Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine.

This change was allegedly a way of achieving the mission of “building a humans-first platform.”

“Featured Stories are another way that the Medium feed is curated by real humans with subject-matter expertise, not just algorithms,” wrote Stubblebine.

And I suppose that’s great news for those writers who want to try to put in more sweat and effort trying to claw their way to favor writing for publications. But not so much for the writers who have built an audience doing their own thing.

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