Yes to a diverse community

In pursuit of a deeper understanding of the world through shared stories

Over the past several months, I’ve gotten questions from the Medium community asking if we’re planning to change our policies in reaction to recent political pressure against diversity, equity, and inclusion. As some companies dismantle their programs and walk back their commitments, we would like to state our stance clearly: Medium stands firm in our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This commitment is inherent to our mission. In our 13 years on the internet, we’ve learned that communities built on division don’t thrive. Businesses do not have to choose between inclusion and profit, and far more people value understanding and respect over hate and division. It’s part of our company values, but it’s also what makes our business succeed.

Our policies benefit both majority voices and underrepresented ones. Yes, we try to create a space for people with diverse experiences and backgrounds to share their stories. And also yes, those stories make the lives of every single reader and writer here richer. We all benefit. Here’s how we think about the role diversity has on our platform, how we champion it through our Rules, and our place in the current media landscape.

Diversity deepens understanding

Our mission is to help readers deepen their understanding of the world, and that mission requires diverse voices. To understand the full context of a situation, you need to hear from someone with a different life experience from your own. Perspectives of people from marginalized communities are essential viewpoints that deserve to be heard.

On our team, we sometimes talk about the Medium version of a story. To us, this means the first-hand, direct-from-the-source account of an experience, with details and nuance rooted in lived expertise. It’s the personal counterpart to the headline news story, as told by the story’s main character; the expert legal analysis, directly from the lawyer who was actually in the courtroom; the unedited account of the student who was on the ground at the protest.

Whether you’re reading about someone with a completely different experience from yours, or learning from other people in your own profession, the pinnacle of the Medium version enhances your knowledge by deepening your understanding of someone else’s experience.

Curiosity over culture wars

Medium is a home for the intellectually curious — people that are driven to expand your understanding of the world. And for curious people, diversity isn’t a threat, it’s a strength.

Hateful culture wars grab attention without providing value. We all know that yelling at people, or being yelled at, is not an effective way to change minds, and it’s a waste of time. That’s why so many people are fleeing the most angry and divisive platforms. Medium has built intentional policies that tone down hate, division, and misinformation. As a result, we’ve created room for connection and space to talk about things that matter.

While some platforms seem overtaken by partisan fighting, we focus on depth and understanding. When news and politics trend here, they are most likely to be driven by deep thoughtfulness, first-hand experience, and expertise. I’ve heard Medium writers describe the platform as “the most civil space I’ve ever written for,” a place that “gives hope in contrast to other social media,” with a community that is “strangely supportive.”

A home for respectful, meaningful conversations

Regardless of what may be happening on other platforms, our Trust and Safety team’s mission, which is clearly stated on our Rules page, remains the same: “Maintain a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment for a wide range of people to engage in meaningful conversations.”

While we constantly evolve and update our policies, our core Rules remain constant and unchanged. They’re one of the things that our staff talk about as what makes them most proud to work at Medium. If it’s been a while since you’ve read the Medium Rules, you can always find them on our website. At the core of our Rules is a respect for personal experience and valuing thoughtful, informed writing. In practice, this means that our Rules specifically prohibit hateful content, threats of violence, harassment, racial slurs, promotion of pseudoscience or disinformation, harmful stereotypes, intentional misgendering of individuals, and other threats to the Medium community. (If you have a concern about something specific you’ve seen on Medium, please flag it or contact us via the contact form. Our human Trust and Safety Team reviews all such questions on a case-by-case basis according to our rules, and takes context into consideration as much as possible.)

The vast majority of our Rules are not disputed. Like all public platforms, we get a lot of spam that we remove. But we also aim to raise the bar for discourse here so that thoughtful and informed takes are elevated. Disingenuous, divisive, uninformed, hateful takes are not.

Our Trust & Safety team is very active. We all rely on teams like ours to block the basic internet slop: spam, scams, misinformation, fraudulent content, plagiarism, and copyright violations. Keep that in mind any time you hear platforms slandered as censors — filtering is our job. Beyond the slop, there is a very small amount of content that falls into a grey area. The good news for free expression is that there is now a plethora of social media and publishing platforms, which means that there is a home somewhere to explore any idea. On ours, we’ve set our bar high for thoughtfulness and respect because that’s the type of home we want to offer.

Diversity raises the bar

Many companies will champion inclusion because it’s the “right thing to do.” And, yes, it is. Our first company operating principle is Humans First and creating a diverse, inclusive platform is a way we fulfill that principle. But our commitment goes deeper than that because we see it as our competitive advantage and way we raise the bar for our business.

Medium was built by and is run by a diverse group of people. This diversity is a raise-the-bar strategy. As a CEO, I feel confident that embracing diversity as a strategy increases the business, cultural, and intellectual capabilities of our company.

I’ll add that personally, as a fairly run-of-the-mill white guy with a computer science degree who grew up in Silicon Valley: My professional achievement and personal fulfillment have been directly tied to getting out of echo chambers, incorporating diverse views, and respecting the life experiences and life choices of all people. I can only lead beyond my own experience because of the diverse experiences of the team we have assembled here.

This diversity is what drew me to Medium. Our open publishing platform validates that every person lives a life worth sharing, that each of us develop expertise through living that is valuable to others, and that there is a strong spirit of generosity within humanity.

To our Medium community: Thanks for reading, for writing, and for listening. The sum of our diversity is how we’re able to build a platform where understanding flourishes.