Each time I launch an exciting initiative to empower writers, some individuals on social media quickly attempt to undermine and sabotage it with unknown motives.
We all face setbacks, criticism, and rejections. These are normal human behaviors. The important thing is to reframe them, forgive, let go, and move on toward our goals.
Whenever I launch an initiative to empower writers, there always seems to be someone or some group eager to undermine it, often launching fierce attacks. This became strikingly clear on March 19, 2020, when I founded ILLUMINATION, a publication rooted in the principles of diversity, inclusion, and equality.
Just as the community began to flourish, something unexpected occurred on 24 April 2020. In the project’s second month, Medium abruptly suspended my account, leading to the publication’s closure and causing panic among writers, editors, administrators, and readers.
The cause? A baseless report from someone who had fabricated claims about my community activities, labeling them as illegal. Without even discussing the issue with me, Medium’s trust team abruptly suspended my account and shut down the ILLUMINATION publication, leaving the platform in darkness for 24 hours.
I was disappointed but also grateful to Ev Williams and the Medium support team, who rectified the situation and genuinely apologized as Mark Zuckerberg did last week when Facebook accidentally suspended my 20-year-old account.
At one point, with great passion, I established a personal publication called Transhumanism Leadership, now known as EUPHORIA. Unfortunately, a writer who had some issues with the publication blocked me and posted a mocking story. As a result, the defaming story remains on the platform. But I saw it as a criticism rather than defamation.
However, what happened next was nothing short of inspiring. The community, bound by shared values and mutual respect, quickly, assertively, and peacefully rallied together to rectify the situation. It was a valuable life lesson for me, one that taught me the importance of articulating my values and community activities more clearly and passionately.
This experience ultimately made ILLUMINATION one of the largest and most impactful publications on Medium, now supported by authentic 31,000 writers and 112,500 supportive readers with over a million stories indexed in Google.
Some publication owners, driven by envy, began spreading rumors that ILLUMINATION was filled with fake writers and readers, claiming it primarily published plagiarized content.
Top writers and pub owners like Tom Kruger even labeled ILLUMINATION as an abomination. Although Tom eventually came around to support ILLUMINATION saying he started liking our pub.
A disheartening moment came in September 2022 when Medium’s new CEO, Tony Stubblebine, — my favorite writer and someone I respect — also referred to ILLUMINATION as an abomination in a comment in 2022 as our 30 volunteer editors published 109 stories from 29K writers at the time overlooking the fact that this publication had curated over 1,000 boosted stories. On that day, including myself, each editor only published around 5 stories. But I knew Tony had no ill intention, so I supported his mission.
In reality, our dedicated team of just 30 editors worked tirelessly, identifying and removing over 500 instances of plagiarism. Volunteer editors like Britni Pepper went above and beyond, even doing detective work to uncover plagiarized stories sourced from YouTube videos — cases that standard plagiarism tools couldn’t detect.
Despite facing personal attacks, including name-calling and defamatory stories, Britni, embodying the resilience of a tough Aussie woman, never gave up. Her unwavering commitment to maintaining the integrity of our publication is a wonderful example of the strength and dedication that defines our community.
And worse, an owner of a publication publicly called ILLUMINATION a Ponzi scheme, and he declared that any writers writing for ILLUMINATION or ILLUMINATION-Curated would be banned from his three publications.
He kept his promise and banned hundreds of our writers. Then 99% of writers who chose his pub came back to ILLUMINATION as it was not a greener pasture. Those writers felt embarrassed and apologized. I opened my doors to them again and had no hard feelings. I never forget a lovely conversation on this matter I had with an inspiring writer Ravyne Hawke.
The writer, friend, and consulting editor of my publications, Marcus aka Gregory Maidman, with a legal background, wrote a very important and challenging story in 2021 to inform the community and published it in another publication as I did not want conflict in my publications.
Some publication owners accused ILLUMINATION of primarily publishing AI-generated content. However, our 159 volunteer editors work daily to manage hundreds of AI-written stories, either returning them or transferring them to the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION, a “junkyard” I strategically created to maintain diversity. I was also the first publication owner on Medium to establish an AI policy, which, unsurprisingly, was subsequently censored by the platform’s algorithm.
But the challenges didn’t end there.
Recently, I took our community to new heights by integrating Medium with Substack, aiming to give our writers a competitive edge and help them grow their audiences across both platforms by improving their newsletter writing skills and audience-building capabilities.
To this end, with my teary eyes, I closed my best publication, ILLUMINATION-Curated, and rebranded it as Curated Newsletters. I also created a publication called Substack Mastery to create an education, collaboration, and inspiration platform on Medium by integrating it with Substack with the support of many volunteers.
I shared my vision through several stories, hoping to inspire and guide our members. Yet, as soon as we began this new journey, the attacks started again. Allegations, defamation, and baseless criticisms emerged from a few writers on Medium and social media.
Some writers I once considered friends began leaving comments accusing ILLUMINATION of spamming Substack. This criticism deeply hurt both our curators and me, especially since we had only shared around 10 stories from ILLUMINATION and 3 from the Substack Mastery newsletters.
It is disheartening because I know of writers who left Medium and posted 3 to 5 articles on Substack in a single day without drawing any such attention or criticism. I only posted around 20 stories myself on Substack in the last 2 months, whereas I posted 60 stories on Medium, and no one complained.
More ironically, some writers with whom I had never had any prior interaction or conflict blocked me in the last 2 months when I started our Substack journey, hiding their messages from me, but I found them on social media thanks to my large network and unique data-gathering tools.
A few writers sent nasty emails, accusing me of waging a campaign against Medium to get this wonderful platform to shut down simply because I suggested improvements and encouraged writers to explore Substack as an additional tool.
This misunderstanding deeply troubled me. As someone who has always been an ardent supporter of Medium, with four Friends of Medium accounts and a history of helping around 500 members upgrade to FoM since December 2023, it felt like a personal blow.
As my publications serve around 12,000 non-paying writers, I have inspired around 1,000 non-members to become paid members since December. I wrote special open letters and invitations to non-members by offering friend links to my boosted stories to attract them to the platform.
Whenever a new writer joins, we add some invitations to non-members in our new writer onboarding packs (which Medium algo censors) to become paying members and the standard ones to become Friends of Medium.
I do it as a giveback activity as Medium does not pay me a cent for this contribution, which brings thousands of dollars to the platform, putting me in distribution jail. I am fine with this as my concern is not me but the community I build here.
I have managed multiple publications on Medium and volunteered countless hours to support the platform. I coordinate the activities of 159 volunteer editors worldwide, guiding them to review, publish, curate, and promote stories. I also ensure that we maintain a high standard by removing harmful content like defamation or hate speech and creating professional submission guidelines.
Together with a team of 159 volunteers, we have published over a million stories on this platform since 2020, attracting thousands of new readers through search engines, my website, and tailored social media platforms, which I pay from my personal funds.
I also cover the administrative cost of my public publications on Medium, as they don’t generate any income from the platform. I offer a free and moderated Slack workspace for 24K+ writers to chat with their peers, share their stories with members, and easily access editors, as Medium does not have communication tools like Substack Notes.
So, despite all my efforts going above and beyond to create a supportive and joyful community, why do some people still try to sabotage my efforts?
When I sought the wisdom of my mentors, their response was both clear and insightful: ‘Sour grapes,’ they said. ‘No other publication owner on this platform has empowered writers to the extent you have, and they lack the energy and resources you bring.’
I asked what more I could do to guard against saboteurs.
They advised that there will always be those who, driven by envy or misunderstanding, attempt to undermine others’ success.
They encouraged me to continue my path without taking anything personally, reminding me that such behavior reflects their inner struggles, not mine.
Their guidance was a source of comfort, as I have been fortunate to receive many affirmations from mentors over the years.
Despite these challenges, I remain steadfast in my mission to empower writers and readers by cross-pollinating them to build a resilient community on Medium and beyond. I am happy with the joy and pain of my community work. So, I invite you to join me on this exciting journey.
We all face setbacks, criticism, and rejections. These are normal human behaviors. The important thing is to reframe them, forgive, let go, and move on toward our goals.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
I shared free chapters of my book that you may enjoy. It is now available on Amazon for purchase if you want to access it earlier. As a beta reader I’d appreciate your honest feedback on stories on Goodreads page of the book.
Preface of “Substack Mastery” for Beta Readers
Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 1
Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 2
Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 3
Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 4
Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 5
Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 6
I wrote a follow-up story from my second account to seek transparency from the platform’s distribution team. Many writers have expressed frustration with the extremely low views on their stories, even when published on ILLUMINATION. If you’ve had a similar experience, I invite you to join a constructive and healthy debate in the story.
A Story About Improving the Community Engagement of This Platform Got 6813.89%
A kind invitation to Medium to transparently explain the network distribution to the writing community to set our…medium.com
With this opportunity, I also invite you to our Quora Space to grow your Substack and Medium audience, which is already followed by 17,000+ readers. I will write a detailed article on how to grow your audience using our new Quora space. I also created a new LinkedIn group for Substack writers, similar to the one I created for Medium writers. It already has 1700 members in two days.
If you are a writer on Medium and Substack, we have a new publication called Substack Mastery for writers at all levels. You are welcome to join and share your Substack experience with your fellow writers and discerning readers.
Here is how ILLUMINATION-Curators senior editors of former ILLUMINATION-Curated now known as Curated Newsleters bridge Medium and Substack and create more visibility for the work of our writers to delight our readers with more options.
Substack Mastery of ILLUMINATION Community | ILLUMINATION Curators | Substack
This newsletter is to empower freelance writers and entrepreneurs of ILLUMINATION community both on Substack and Medium…illuminationcurators.substack.com
I also teach contributors of Curated Newsletters and Substack Mastery publications how to use canonical names to drive traffic to your newsletters rather than to my publications because the goal is to empower you; publications are only tools.
I wrote this story as a way to give back to the writing community, as I owe my success to my mentors. Mentorship and collaboration can enhance our knowledge, make awareness and skill-building easy, and make the journey enjoyable on different platforms. I wrote several stories like this for writers and readers and linked them to a list titled Writing, Content Development & Marketing Strategies. I will distill them in my newsletter Content Strategy, Development, & Marketing Insights on Substak.
If you are a new reader, you may check out some of my topics, including the brain, mental health, cognitive function, significant health conditions, longevity, nutrition/food, valuable nutrients, ketogenic lifestyle, self-healing, weight management, writing/reading, including 100+ Insightful Life Lessons from My Circles for the Last 50+ Years.
I publish my health and wellness stories on EUPHORIA and share distilled versions on SUBSTACK. My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experiences, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
If you are a writer, you are welcome to join my publications by sending a request via this link. I support 31K writers who contribute to my publications on this platform. You can contact me via my website. I also have another profile to write and curate tech stories. Friend Links to My Sample Boosted Stories for Non-Members of Medium. You can read this story on Substack for free.
You are welcome to join the ILLUMINATION Community on Medium and Substack. Here is the Importance and Value of Medium Friendship for Writers and Readers
Join me on Substack too, where I offer experience-based content on health, content strategy, and technology topics to inform and inspire my readers.
Get an email whenever Dr Mehmet Yildiz publishes. He is a top writer and editor on Medium. dr-mehmet-yildiz.medium.com
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