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At a certain point you’re asking everyone to take a vow of poverty, unsustainability, or irrelevance. By all means, hold people to an ethical standard, and then beyond that, get over your aesthetics.

@anildash all software must physically hurt to use. That's how you know it's good and just.

@fromjason @anildash If software doesn’t prompt you for a monthly subscription, is it really software?

@reflex it started long before Andreessen had that agenda, and he’s not a primary funder, nor is that firm a presence on the board or an influence on leadership. That’s not an accurate description of the platform’s agenda.

@anildash I mean, Andreeson has always been an ancap, I knew people who worked with him in university. He didn't change.

For much of Medium's history, the VC representative to the board was Ben Horowitz, of Andreeson-Horowitz. Currently the VC spot is held by Kevin Thau, of Spark Capital.

I agree that Medium is better than substack, but I get why people don't like it and I'll generally choose content on other platforms when possible. Their union busting activities alone are enough to stay away

@reflex @anildash Yeah, that all started changing over the last few years and I can give you an official update.

A) there are zero VCs on the board right now or with rights to appoint a board seat.

B) I took over in 2022 and Ben left before I had my first board meeting. Kevin had left long before that.

C) we did a full recap in April 2023 and at that point A16Z lost a lot of their equity position and lost all of their preferred stock (converted to common).

@reflex @anildash

I never got any sense of media agenda from Ben in the tiny bit of overlap or in the tales of company history.

But even if so, they have no say now and if based on other investments probably have a small financial incentive for Medium to fail.

@coachtony @anildash Thank you for the update. Most board tracking sites seem to still list Kevin as a board member, so that's stale data. It's also good to see that A16Z is mostly gone, I guess with Substack they don't need Medium anymore.

Any changes regarding labor practices? That is the other primary complaint about Medium in general.

I appreciate the information, truly.

@reflex @anildash there was never union busting, which is illegal, and we continue to care successfully about following employment law.

@coachtony @anildash I understand that is the corporate line and one you must repeat, however Kauff McGuire & Margolis is who Medium hired and union busting is their specialty.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/medium-tells-journalists-to-feel-free-to-quit-after-busting-union-drive/

@reflex @anildash well it was before my time and I've never once heard the perspective of the pro union side. So I can't speak to it fairly and probably shouldn't even if I could.

@McNeely @coachtony @reflex @anildash awesome indeed!

@kris Looool I hate the accuracy of this