Jessica Wildfire left because Tony Stubblebine gaslit her wheshe asked reasonable questions and expected his answers to make sense.

It's possible he didn't know. But he should have been a leader and he wasn't. He flat out admitted he didn't have a full understanding of how the algorithm worked but then concluded that her observations were crazy.

Dick move.

He could have said, " We haven't made any recent changes to the algorithm, but I don't fully understand how it works so it IS possible that something already imbedded into it got triggered and is causing the drops in readership you've observed. I'll look into it, it will take time because these algorithms are complex and complicated as you can imagine, but I'll get back to you. In the meantime, please be patient and I'm sorry you're struggling on the platform."

And then followed through. You know, like a good leader.

But no. He went with, "We haven't made any changes. I can't be fussed to take a look at what you're seeing. You're making a big deal out of nothing. These things happen, what do you want from me? I don't really believe you're seeing what you're saying you're seeing. Maybe you're just a bad writer and people are finally cluing in on that fact."

She showed us all the receipts.

I don't blame her for leaving and it was obvious from that, that Medium was going to go down in the coming months.

And it has. Hence the exodus.

As a woman writer, Jessica was getting trolled a lot. His comments, made publicly, also green lighted even more trollish vitriol from the bro club he is surrounded with (as all men in power positions are) and caters to.

There was also a rising tide of "anti-doomerism" flack coming from the positivity gurus who had seen their earnings take a hit with the rise of writers like Jessica and Umair. It's like what you see from TV. Some sitcom does really well and people flock to it because it's new and exciting and suddenly everything is a similar sitcom. People get tired of it and rush off to be enthralled by this new shiny procedural crim drama. Now there are 100 Law & Order shows. Eventually, they'll be replaced too.

Whatever happened, whatever lever got triggered, it's clear that the (what I would call) toxicly positive self help bullshit is being pushee and elevated by the algorithm. My feed has that brain dead, tone deaf trash in it every day. Even writers I have previously blocked or muted.

At least his bro posse should be happy for a while as the pendulum has swung back in their favor.

I find it funny that the people who tend to enjoy "doomer" articles take responsibility for their own reading habits and use already available functionality to patiently prune their feed to their liking, like a normal responsible adult; but the folks who have to have positivity spoon fed to them complain about how "doomers" affect their mental health, start a campaign, and go running to Tony about how unfair it is to get things catered to their favor rather than just stop reading things they don't like or have gotten tired of like everyone else.

(I'm not saying Tony Stubblebine actually pulled the rug out from under top writers, I'm not calling him a liar. I'm saying that certain folks were asking and others were demanding it. Like I said, I think some kind of automatic cascade was triggered by the rise of anti-doomer articles and the negative comments in their commentary that changes what was being promoted and what wasn't. I also only have a very loose understanding of how these algorithms work, so forgive the rough explanation of what I mean. I can't explain it well. I know that.)