Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine has said that Mastodon is “an emerging force for good in social media.” Hear why he believes that, what’s wrong with the attention economy, and why it’s an exciting time for creators and entrepreneurs.
Something happened when the internet turned into an ad-driven business. Incentives became oriented around grabbing attention over valuing substance and connection.
What’s happening now in the Fediverse gives us a chance to reverse that. To pivot out of the attention economy into something more meaningful.
Tony Stubblebine has already emphasized a focus on quality at Medium. As the publisher of Better Humans and its sister publications, Tony was one of Medium’s most successful community members. He knew the platform better than almost anyone and so when it came time to look for a CEO, he got the job in July 2022.
In January 2023, Medium set up a Mastodon instance at me.dm. Tony’s said that he believes Mastodon is “an emerging force for good in social media,” although he’s still exploring what that means for his company.
In today’s episode, Mike and Tony discuss their reasons for wanting to participate in the Fediverse, going so far as standing up their own instances for their communities. They also discuss what’s wrong with the attention economy, a framework for high-quality recommendations, and why it’s an exciting time for entrepreneurs, builders, writers and consumers.
Highlights of this conversation include:
• under the hood on Medium’s algorithm
• why human curation is a true service
• optimizing for substance
• the third business model era of the internet
• how to get started in the Fediverse
💰 Mastodon is a non-profit that runs on donations from the community. You can help Mastodon succeed by supporting the organization via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mastodon
🔎 You can follow Tony on Mastodon at https://me.dm/@coachtony.
✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at https://flipboard.social/@mike, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the Fediverse, at https://flipboard.social/@mike@flipboard.com
This transcript was generated by AI, which may affect its accuracy. As such, we apologize for any errors in the transcript or confusion in the dialogue.
Something happened when the internet turned into an ad driven business. The name of the game was to get as many eyeballs as possible to scale and grow quickly. Our incentives became oriented around grabbing attention over valuing substance. What's happening now in the Fediverse gives us a chance to reverse that to pivot out of the attention economy and into something more meaningful.
Welcome to Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the world of decentralized social media. Each episode host Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement. Someone who sees the Fediverse has tremendous potential, and understands that this could be the internet's next wave.
Today, Mike's talking to Tony Stubblebine, the CEO of Medium. As the publisher of Better Humans and sister publications, Tony was one of Medium’s most successful community members. Tony knew Medium better than anyone. So when it came time to look for a leader of the platform, he got the job.
He's done good work at Medium since joining as CEO in July 2022. And made news in January 2023. When Mediums set up a mastodon instance, at me.dm. Mike and Tony discussed this journey here on with other big themes like what's wrong with the attention economy, Tony's framework for high quality recommendations, and why it's an exciting time for entrepreneurs and builders.
We hope you enjoy this conversation.
Mike McCue:
Tony Stubblebine, welcome to the podcast, great to see you.
Tony Stubblebine:
It's a pleasure, glad to be here.
Mike McCue:
So um, I thought it would be fun to start by telling the story of how you were such a major Medium writer, and then became a CEO. How has that been going? How that happened? How you feel about all that?
Tony Stubblebine:
This is the dream for every power user of every platform ever, you know, like, somewhere who is the top tick talker. And do they have a shot at being the CEO of tick tock one day. I mean, it was there's a little bit more to that story than that. I had been, we've been I was running a company that was funded by the same fund that funded Medium. And so I shared office space with Medium and then I kept sharing office space. And so I've been really close to the company for a long time. And then I'd been an advisor. And then as Medium grew into more this partner program where they started paying authors and paying some publishers, I started to start in publication. And that does writing there. I think I've written 700 posts over there. But running publications. And so before, around the time I became CEO, about 2% of Medium traffic was going through the location that I was running, it looked before humans, yeah, better humans, other programming, better marketing, I was running three, they're kind of in my wheelhouse of helping people achieve some sort of goal and self improvement. But also, you know, marketing is a business thing. And, and programming is where I got my start, I'm originally a programmer. So that's that was like the core of my resume when the founding CEO, Evan Williams, who's, you know, somewhat of a luminary when he decided he wanted to step down. I said, you know, I think I'm capable, like I've been a CEO for a long time, I think I'm capable of running it. And I know for certain that nobody understands Medium better than me. And so there's not going to be a ramp up time. If you want someone to come in and make change right away. You're not going to find anyone better than me. So I made that case, and, and they bought it. And now I'm 15 months in, and I've proved myself and so everyone right in this moment is pretty happy. Feel like, you know, is a bet. Everyone was taking a bet and we bet paid off.
Mike McCue:
Yeah, that's a great thing I you know, smart for Ev to bet on you to do that. And I understand Medium is doing quite well. Right now, a lot of lot of things that you've done since you took over, what would you say is kind of the biggest thing that you changed or did when when you came in?
Tony Stubblebine:
The thing I'm most proud of is to pivot out of the attention economy. I just think everything that's wrong on the internet is this. The you know, essentially is the way that ad driven businesses incentivize attention over substance. And I just, I come from a different type of media. I'd come from O'Reilly Media, which was book publishing for programmers, but essentially, that company trained me to think what's the best possible most correct most helpful advice not what is the most inflammatory way to teach programming, but what's like, the most highest substance way. And then then I was publishing, you know, in self improvement and not just publishing. But then I was working with the readers themselves. So the thing I cared about was not was the thing they read interesting. It's, well, how did their life change after they read it. And I just that that part of the internet feels like it got obscured by clickbait content mills, you know, just everyone writing for the machines, instead of really writing for what I think, you know, the purpose of not just writing or communication is to transform someone else's life for the better. So we had a very attention focused recommendation system when I got here and took all year, but we we replaced it with recommendations that have a lot more expert signal inside of them. And I'm happy to do that I liked that outcome. Also turns out to have been a great business decision. Because we were seeing when we were doing pure recommendations, like attention driven recommendations, we were seeing, like reads per user go up, but we were seeing retention come down. And when we flipped it, sometimes reading activity comes down, because it's like, you know, the highlight the highest substance author is not the best, like, doesn't write the best titles, you know, and, but if you do, click and you read it, you're pretty satisfied. And so what I go around telling people now is, there's a huge difference between what someone is willing to read, and what someone is happy to have paid to read. And because we're a subscription business, we have to be optimizing for that for that ladder.
Mike McCue:
Now that is a very important realization that I think a lot of other businesses need to go through. And so this is really I'm very interested in how you were able to algorithmically discern between something that people felt like if they read it, it changed their life and was useful, you know, versus something that was just clickbait have a lot of engagement. How were you able to tell the difference? It was that human curation that made the difference? Did you change something in the algorithm to match?
Tony Stubblebine:
This is like, culturally, the internet made this weird switch of little, like anti gatekeepers switch, and we forgot what a service it is to have someone smart picking, you know, picking things for you to read, like, yeah, when you went to college, you know, put your syllabus was picked for you by a professor, you don't even know anything about the subject. And then you got like, a fricking master, picking what you should read. That's like, that's a real service. And so I had read this Neil Stevenson book, right before I joined this book fall, which I don't think was like his most popular book, but it had this idea of, of a future internet where everyone subscribe to essentially a curation service. And rich people all had a dedicated person. And so that they got the sanest stuff. But the poor people, all they could afford was an algorithm that was focused on optimizing a dopamine reaction. And so they became crazies. Like, you can 100%, like, understand this as a book that was written during the Trump era. And, but that I mean, that's essentially I was, I was reading that, and I was thinking, Yeah, I agree with this, like, I would love you know, essentially a research librarian for myself, right. And in, there's some people that are think like, oh, and you know, you like you want, like, you want no gatekeepers at all, and they forget that then you end up with an algorithm as the gatekeeper. And the algorithm is just not optimizing for any sort of subject matter expertise. And so we we still use an algorithm, but we just, we think of it, it's only doing matchmaking. It's not doing anything regarding whether or not this is good or not. We put that into the hands of, of curators elaborate
Mike McCue:
What do you mean by matchmaking so is that matching based on here's something we know is good. And then here's an algorithm that determines something is matches an interest that someone has.
Tony Stubblebine:
If someone writes a great article about the Hudson Valley, which is where I am today, which might be where you are today. The algorithm can no you and I care about the Hudson Valley and make that match for us. Meanwhile, someone in In Ohio, who's not necessarily traveling here, they don't need to see that, right. And this comes up for all sorts of topics, right? Like I care about some of the arts, but I'm not like not all of them. I care about some types of music, but not all types of music. I care about basketball, but I don't care about baseball, and and so I care about startups. But I don't care about corporate stuff. So it's like, management advice for startups. Yeah. I'll read that. management advice for Fortune 500. So keep it away from me, please. Right.
Mike McCue:
So that so those those are where you use algorithms, right? Because you can scale that matchmaking. Yeah, but you but those are all those algorithms as they the famous saying is garbage in garbage out, right. So if you if you have bad content going into those algorithms, you're just matchmaking people with bad content. So what you sounds like what you're doing is you have people who are making judgment calls on what is good content. And then you're using algorithms to match people up with that good content.
Tony Stubblebine:
Yeah, that's I want to like really highlight for people because the number one misconception is that good content is an opinion. Right? And this is like, maybe maybe for a poem, a good poem is a matter of taste. Right. But for management advice, it's a matter of experience. For programming advice, it's a matter of experience for running advice, it's a matter of experience for physical therapy, it's a matter of experience. And, and so if you put that experience into, you could just say we're adding that as a signal to the algorithm. But it's, it has been really transformative to us, for us, and just completely changes the nature of the of the product, you know, essentially all social media platforms. I don't know if other CEOs say this, but I say the content is our product. Because otherwise we think the software is our product, the content of the product, and it just completely changes the nature of of our product if we do this.
Mike McCue:
Yeah, it Flipboard you know, I often talk about the curation is our product. It's that service that you you mentioned, right?
Tony Stubblebine:
Right. I know you're a big believer in curation as well. And that's, I think, what makes Flipboard work, right?
Mike McCue:
Yeah. And you know, what's really fascinating to me is that you've you've combined the concept of people creating content on your platform, but then also recommending content and you have so it sounds like you have you obviously have some on staff curators that are making those calls. Are you also opening that up for others to recommend content at all?
Tony Stubblebine:
Our view is that the subject matter expertise should live in the community. And then our internal curation team is like the the gut check on it. Anytime you put something out to the community, you're going to get gamed a little bit, or sometimes a lot. And so there's some checks and balances, but we don't internally want to be tastemakers or subject. It's not it can snap tasted the wrong word. Even it's we don't want to be we don't want to be subject matter experts. And we're not right. We're we know a lot about a handful of things. But for the most part, we know, you know, we don't know enough to say, Wow, this is actually a really important article for people that programming rust. Like right, no one on our internal curation team has an opinion on that. I'm not sure even our engineers have been in where we use go here. So why would we know anything? No one in the company can make that determination. Right. But someone who lives and breathes it and has also seen everything that's ever been published on Medium on that topic knows right away. That's important, right? And so we ended up with a knife written about this to essentially a three step recommendation process community subject matter experts. We call them nominators, internal curation team with which has checks and balances. And if it passes that, then it's boosted. We call this whole program, and then it's boosted. And it's weighted differently in our recommendation algorithms. And then the recommendation algorithm is, well, you know, Are you subscribed to this author, you subscribe to this publication? Do you follow this topic? Have you read articles like this in the past? Okay, if so, then there's a matchmaking opportunity here. And let's go ahead and do it.
Mike McCue:
By the way, that is is probably the most succinct and clear description I've heard of anyone provide for any recommendation engine? Do that is really great. And I think one of the fantastic approaches that you have here is that, then by definition, it's next to impossible to have, you know, misinformation, get boosted by your system. Right. Yeah.
Tony Stubblebine:
I mean, well, I wouldn't go that far. Right. It's, you know, like you want the dialogue to always be improving, and you don't know, sometimes early on, what is the right information? What I think what doesn't get boosted is lazy thinking, if that makes sense. You know, like, that's the the most divisive topics are Medium. They just, I look at them. And I end up feeling like, well, one side has just been lazy. Like, they haven't really taken the time to make a full argument. And I think that's because the their current argument works in an attention economy. So there's been no right or incentive for them. So Right. You know, we crack down on a lot of anti Vax stuff during COVID. Let's say, Yeah, that's actually one of the top two most divisive things on Medium. And I think the world lost out probably, by how lazy the anti Vax movement was. Because we didn't have it meant we couldn't have a great debate about whether or not to close schools, because it became politicized really quick, right. And if Medium can be a place that kind of set standards, then and, and people with differing views can rise to meet those standards, then I think we can have a real discussion around that.
Mike McCue:
Which is, I think, what people are yearning for, right? Yeah, they're looking for the different points of view, the different perspectives, that are rooted in some kind of, as you said, kind of thoughtful, you know, intentional writing, and that, and then I think that's that lens, then the field to Medium feels very high quality, it feels very knowledgeable, you know, it's some, it's not where you go for like, quick hits you go, you go to, like really advanced and deepen your knowledge in some area that you're interested in.
Tony Stubblebine:
Yeah, that's, I mean, it's, it's in our mission to deepen people's understanding of the world. And that's why we chose to be a subscription. Because when we fulfill that people feel good about having paid us money, and we don't have to, we don't have to keep their attention all day, every day. There's a word we started using more. Because, you know, sometimes it's feels very, like competitive, right? And it's like, No, we're just think we're complimentary to the rest of the internet, that it's not that I mean, I guess at some level, I think a lot of the internet is broken, and I don't like it. But I don't need you to think that right? I just like there's something that's missing from what the rest of the internet is giving. And, and, you know, we want to we want to complement that give it give people something different. So Medium can be a place that's ops optimized for substance great. I still use Tiktok all the time. And I'm not using it for substance, I'm using it right. But It cracks me up. Right. Like those are completely different needs. Right. Right.
Mike McCue:
Right. So you know, early this year, you launched your, your instance on Mastodon. Yeah. And you talked a little bit about short form versus long form writing. You talked about the importance of the community, you talked about the value system Mastodon has is all being reasons why you did that. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about like your rationale for doing that. And how that has played out over the last several months. Almost a year now. Yeah.
Tony Stubblebine:
I love being on Mastodon because I love the people. And I think a lot of it was a lot of the thinking was just mission based to advance our, our goals. And some of it too is to be just be present on as something new is being birthed. And, I mean, that's how I got this job on Medium, right? Yeah. And it's not instant. Right. I just stayed present on Medium for 10 years until they made me CEO. And, and so I mean, that can't happen. I'm in the Fediverse is no as the cool thing about it. Right. That's the cool thing. I you know, this is why we you and I talk offline is I think there's a real future to the Fediverse and it might not I'll be instant. But there's this vibe of like, are we at the end of platform monopolies? And the way I've started to look at it is, you know, it's not that Twitter will go out of business, but the usage of Twitter is getting fragmented. And so I think the press has this wrong event. They're like, who's gonna replace Twitter? 10 p, right? might replace Twitter and Twitter might be the biggest of the 10. You know, right. It doesn't matter. It's like something is interesting is happening. And I'm not following it as a horse race. I'm following it as well, one of the really interesting fragments is happening on Mastodon in the Fediverse. And I don't know where it's going to go. But I know, it fits, you know, our value system. And so we want to be present. And so. Right, thank you know, it's like, it's tempting to judge like whether or not our entry has been successful yet. And I don't even think of it that way. I think probably a lot of our user base is thinking is waiting for a winner to be announced. And then that might never happen. Right.
Mike McCue:
It's that's that lazy thinking again, you know, the the, you know, I think back to the days of AOL, when that was the only way that people were online. And it's not like one thing replaced AOL. Hundreds of 1000s of websites replaced AOL. Right. So you could say the internet replaced AOL. Yeah. But you know, it was hundreds of 1000s of websites that sprung up. And I think that's probably what we'll see play out in the Fediverse.
Tony Stubblebine:
Right. And I like I'd say, like some of the Twitter use case moved to discord and to read it, and some will end up on threads, which is either or is not maybe part of the Fediverse. We'll see. I mean, I heard definitely, it's coming. But who knows? My blue sky all like, great. And then some people will stay on Twitter itself also great, right. And maybe we weren't meant for one global Town Square, maybe a lot of people would rather be in a smaller semi public square. That, that all it could be a really interesting adjustment. Well, one thing like to go back to our values is, we just think there's something inherently healthy about writing. And that, you know, Medium, like makes a business out of the pinnacle of writing like a, a person sharing something deeply personal, either about their profession or their life. And you wouldn't be able to get that kind of that human story and the human wisdom from that human story anywhere else. But those things don't they don't spring up fully formed, right? Like that the muscle of writing, having ideas, thinking them through. And so short form, like how many blog how many great blog posts started as a tweet, right? And and how much of just writing regularly and thinking about what you're going to write creates a brain that's primed to rain, as I think it's it's all part of the writing ecosystem is to always be like, always be writing, and always be writing.
Mike McCue:
Yeah, yeah. Mastodon is a way of doing that. It's a way of putting thoughts out there having conversations. It's part of the writing process. And that's a great, that's a great way to think about it. And so when you look at your nominators, I think you call them do so do you feel like those nominators could then also be on Mastodon and part of that Mastodon community? And you you how do you see your Medium community and the Mastodon community? Do you think these things will be different? Or will they eventually merge?
Tony Stubblebine:
I thought I might come on here and just interview you. Like, I think you when we talk not on this podcast, I think you're looking around corners that I can't see it. And so I'm a little bit like, your My, the way I operate is get in early, understand it before everyone else. And through experience, right. Yeah, I'm not there yet. I don't know. That your question on nominators is interesting because I think that's something you've known for a long time and I've only more recently come to feel it. It's like there's a curation persona doesn't hear it. And when and now they think back out is like a Riley used to call these made It sounds like maybe it's interesting, you could elevate yourself by knowing all the experts and connecting them, and connecting them to people that needed to meet them. But you might not yourself be, you know, the world's expert on data science or the world's X. You know, it's like, essentially, though, Riley conference chairs tended to be mavens, they, they knew everyone, they were incredibly extroverted. They're incredibly curious. They got, they got excited by hearing about something new, and being and knowing like, oh, you know, who would think that's cool, Jim. Right. Right. And, and so that, yeah, it's like, you know, I, I'd seen it before, but I hadn't, I hadn't really understood it as a persona, but Medium. Prior, like, we've always had a major publication community, we just I never really leaned into that, even though I was running publications. Now, like, that's to us is the thing that unlocks a different type of author, you know, like, say, like, we're a complement to the internet. Well, the internet right now is built for authors who are also marketers, right? The vast majority of people with some like, great human story, they're not going to learn how to game SEO, right? Viral headlines, build an audience, you shouldn't have to build an audience to have a great story heard, right. And so by having an ecosystem with curators inside of it, it means that anyone can show up and like a curator will spot you and give you an audience. If it you know, or help you help connect you to an audience, it doesn't mean every single person who shows up is going to be Malcolm Gladwell level fame. But like, there's people who are actively looking at it, it's not a requirement that you be a marketer in order to have your voice heard. I think like me, that's, like, that's something that's a way we can complement the rest of the internet.
Mike McCue:
Well, it's so interesting, too, because, you know, when I, I'm, How many things did you said, you wrote on Medium, like, 700 700, I've wrote two in my entire career. And, you know, it's incredibly time consuming for me to write sit down and write it's, I have so much respect for something that's well written. And two things. Yeah, I posted them on Medium and they live on to this day, I still get comments, I still and I posted them years ago. Yeah. And, but what I what I also find that I can do while while it's very hard for me to take the time to write something, it is not hard for me to take the time to recommend something. Right, and other entrepreneurs, other technology, you know, people that are coming up in their product career, I love being able to just say, this is a really good story to read, or this is a great video to watch. And, and I think that, like you said, you termed it as a service. I couldn't agree more. And in some cases, you know, even if I never wrote anything, right, I still have a career and I've been building, you know, I've been learning. And so if I see a piece of content, like you said, as a subject matter expert, being able to recommend it. Yeah. And that's like the highest order bit. I think for social media, it's like it's the best calling, it's most sort of genuinely positive thing that it could do in the world.
Tony Stubblebine:
Yes, yes. Right. And that's, I mean, it's such a great Kitces. Like, what algorithm is going to understand, like the, like, the entrepreneurship, and startup articles on Medium better than new would? They're possible? And it's also you do this other thing, which is underrated is, when you share it, you tell a person why, like you're saying, I heard you say this, I think you should read this, because right, and the algorithm doesn't have that context. Did you ever there's this side project I used to love. It was from Jason Kottke. It was a something off the Twitter API. In the old days, it's called stellar.io. And what it was was a feed of tweets that people you follow had faved. And so you'd see the tweet along with who you knew had faved it. And so then you would always read that tweet in the context of it's really good. And it probably matters in for this reason, because you'd add in this extra context of the curator essentially. Yeah. And it's like it's such a simple a simple type of curation, and yet it adds so much extra, extra meaning.
Mike McCue:
Yeah, yeah. You know, that's, that's that kind of approach to thinking about how you would look at a social media feed. For example, right is Very interesting, I think you look at the most people look at social media through one or two lenses, they have their following feed, which is a reverse cron, generally list of posts for and then you have the for you feed, which is a, you know, algorithmic concoction, it's a black box of things we think you want to read, right. And there's some meta matchmaking going on there. There's a lot of, you know, problems with the algorithms that are tuned, as you said, for engagement. And that's the only two ways that people look at social media today, which to me feels fundamentally broken, right, like, just the way you consume, you know, and you're gonna, that means you're gonna miss all sorts of important stuff, you're gonna see stuff that's actually not good being recommended to you. And it feels like there's a whole other model for how, you know, we should enable people to discover the things that people are recommending, right?
Tony Stubblebine:
This is what I love about the demise of Twitter and Facebook, and they don't, they don't have to go all the way to the grave. But it just even Google right now. I feel like, no one. None of these are guaranteed to exist at the level of monopoly power that they've had. And so yeah, it's like such an exciting time for entrepreneurs, going like I'm an entrepreneur at heart here, kind of working with an existing asset. But like anyone who's starting businesses, like is looking at the Fed of ours. Like, we get to rethink everything, everything, everything,
Mike McCue:
…literally everything. What was that service you mentioned earlier?
Tony Stubblebine:
the stellar.io, I assume it's not functioning anymore, because they turned down the AP turn off the API, right?
Mike McCue:
Well, you know, that's the beauty of the Fediverse. Right? You can do that. Now, any developer can in their spare time, do a stellar.io and stand it up and not worry about somebody shutting it down.
Tony Stubblebine:
Yeah, right. Oh, that's right. That's exactly like, yeah, that's a, it would be such a great project. These things don't have to be businesses, or we have different or they can, and we have different business models.
Mike McCue:
It's like, yeah, all of Mastodon is funded via Patreon. It's Eugene, just coding most of it himself, with a few folks helping him funded entirely through through Patreon.
Tony Stubblebine:
While that I think, also, what's cool is that we're in like, the third era, the third business model era of the Internet is like everything had to be free, then everything was ad driven, which sort of didn't completely a family, everything needs to be free. And now we've seen the limits of this, right? Like, we're all like, I don't know, maybe I should pay for what I value, right? Or not all, that's been enough of us. And so you just have different incentives when you're when your user is also your direct customer. And, and so that, again, goes back to now's the time when we get to rethink everything.
Mike McCue:
And you know, one of the most profound differences here is that the web was a, it was a set of connections between web pages, and that that's what made up the web, right? But now what we have are people connected to web pages and people connected to people. It's a much more intricate web, right? This social web, right? And it's still just as open as the web. Right? And so if you think about, okay, well, what does search look like in that world? Why does content discovery and you know, what does content creation look like? How does curation work in that world? You really, it is really the ability to rethink through everything. How does monetization? How's the business model work? You know, but all from an open model, where there's no longer a middleman in between the connection between somebody who wrote a piece of content and somebody who created it, who was consuming it? Yeah. Now that connection is direct. Right?
Tony Stubblebine:
And it's, I think the internet is healthy when the kind of the platform dynamics or the dynamics change, because the dynamics get so thoroughly gamed and like, maybe we need Google to die, because we need like all the growth hackers to be put out of business and have to start from scratch. But it's just like, you know, recipes on Google or like, famously the worst result, right? It's just right 100 paragraphs of make believe story, but you just want before you get to the recipe itself, right? Right. Why is that? That's because Google needs that for some reason, right? And the search results just get worse and worse, because the SEO industry is so good and so mature. And you look at that and you think well, we just need fewer web pages and the search results, right? Like how are you going to filter that right? Well, as you're getting Like, now we have networks of people connected to pages connected to people. And, you know, maybe I really only should be seeing a subset of the internet I should be seeing on, you know, on most occasions, I should be seeing the subset that you like, and that my network likes, and might be a big improvement, right? Like some even are about to get that Yeah, right.
Mike McCue:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, knowing who are these mavens know, who are these thought leaders, these experts? And what are they recommending? What are they reading? And having those then influence heavily how search works?
Tony Stubblebine:
Yeah. I mean, it doesn't always happen and other places really effectively, like how to book spread, right? Like, not through word of mouth or word of mouth, right? Yeah. And,
Mike McCue:
and that, right, you had the you have the review that comes out, you know, from a reviewer that you trust, you have word of mouth that spreads. And you're right.
Tony Stubblebine:
And this is, you know, it's like, there's so many ways in which, you know, if you change the dynamics, like new opportunities come up, I was kind of arguing with someone who wrote, like aI articles on Medium. And they were like, really upset that their like payment, their payments per month had dropped from, like, $150 to $75. And I was like, Dude, why are you trying to game our payment system with mediocre content, middle trash, versus an emerging topic you have in advance, you have an opportunity to use right and to make yourself the expert on this topic and be paid hundreds of 1000s if not millions of dollars. And here you are complaining to me about $75 You are living and so some local maxima, that is like, you know, underneath people's feet, right, like it like, you know, like, ankle level, right. And so what I found myself saying to him was like, quit gaming us and write something that's gonna impress someone important, which is like a very elitist thing to say, but there is that like, yeah, it's like the current incentives, encourage dumb writing. And you have to go by word of mouth, then, oh, that's a whole different ballgame. Right? Like, what's something that's going to be so good, that people will? And then, yeah, yeah.
Mike McCue:
And that, you know, I imagine, have you seen a, an influx of AI generated content? You know, on Medium? Has that been a thing that you've been dealing with,
Tony Stubblebine:
Wait, you're trying to try to get me angry?
Mike McCue:
I mean, it's the ultimate in lazy writing and lazy thinking, right?
Tony Stubblebine:
No, I saw a former VC post today, he had taken a tweet that I've that people seem to like, and it sent it to chat GPT to turn it into a blog post, and he posted it. And I read this thing, and it was the coldest, dumbest, most generic explanation. And I was like, and I know this guy said, hey, yeah, like, I was kind of curious about your tweet. And I still don't think I understand. Because there's this enormous amount of human story behind why you said that. And it's all missing from this generic chat GPT explanation. For the most part, this is the thing that saying about being angry, though. For the most part, AI has just generated a lot of spam. Because most of what we recommend recommend has been filtered to humans first, and humans spot it instantly. It's just verbose, generic nonsense. It doesn't make its way into the recommendations at the level that you want. But it does mean that all of our nominators, all of our editors, a lot of our authors are just seeing a lot more of it, and just makes spam cheaper, essentially. Has not, and I've really yet to find anything. Like people aren't sending me great articles that were really helped by AI in any way. I think I think one AI generated poem has made it into our booths program, so we're not perfect, but we've also far to our knowledge only boosted one thing that was aI generated.
Mike McCue:
It wasn't labeled as AI generated or wasn't Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I see. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting isn't how people can tell this was written by AI. But like algorithms can't. It's actually really hard to write an algorithm that can detect whether it was aI what is that? What's up with that? Right? There's like those are something on identifiable still, thankfully and luckily, about human judgment that can't You can't just put down in an algorithm.
Tony Stubblebine:
It's just such a weird moment it is that is 100%. True, like every two weeks, we are trusting safety team checks, all the AI, checkers, and then none of them are good enough for production. And then meanwhile, all of us and all of the editors and all the nominators feel like they can spot it instantly. Granted, false positives or whatever, don't really matter. It's sort of, it's like the if you say this is AI generated, and you're wrong, you're still saying, this is generic, too wordy, and not any good. But basically, I think we do spot it. I think we're, we tend to be right and understanding, you know, there's multiple categories of mediocre uninteresting writing and, you know, we're, you know, one of them is definitely AI. I don't know why this, for me is like, anti human. I mean, this is, to me, the thing that cracks me up at, you know, at work is, all of a sudden, there's a market like segmentation for being pro human. Like our authors love that we're, we took a kind of an anti AI stance, thank you. It's affirming to them. And like, what, what sort of weird industry are we in that we've like, we've gone down this path, where suddenly? Oh, no, no, no, I like being human, like as a as a marketer, like
Mike McCue:
having my writing absorbed into some new, you know, other work that I get no credit for? Right?
Tony Stubblebine:
Right. It's, it's a weird, it's like, we have the Terminator myth. And yet, the very first thing we tried to do with AI is replace ourselves.
Mike McCue:
Like, that it's so funny, we learn about this.
Tony Stubblebine:
Yeah, this is where like, I mean, kind of having like a liberal arts degree, and having some well rounded life experience, makes it easier, maybe, for me to see that there's, you know, there's more to living a full life and just really effective software.
Mike McCue:
That is such a good point, you know, and, you know, said by somebody who's I know, has written a lot of software and written about writing software, and how software can help change the world. And it can, right, I mean, I think, but but the way you've applied software and technology with the liberal arts judgment, is the magic. You know, Steve Jobs used to talk about that. Yeah. And that is a that, to me is like one of the things I love most about Medium is it has that very human, very genuine approach to, you know, to technology that that that blend, and I think the change that you made as CEO to say, Listen, write something that impresses someone, and then we'll we'll boost it, and we'll match make it right. That's brilliant. And I think that I can see how that would just change every aspect of how your business operates all your metrics, internally, your meetings, decision making, you know, so good on you, man. I It's really impressive. And
Tony Stubblebine:
it's fun work, too. I mean, isn't this why we got into this industry? I just, again, I think it's so easy to get lost in this in this industry, that
Mike McCue:
thinking, bringing that thinking to the Fediverse, you know, is super exciting, right? I I'm really excited to see where you go next with Mastodon and the Fediverse. Because this is this type of thinking, right? How do you not miss the good stuff? How do we not just fall into the trap of like, we're just looking at another following feed, it looks just like Twitter, and, you know, okay, you know, like, where do we go? How do we make it really work?
Tony Stubblebine:
I keep saying this, I'm just so excited for a change in the dynamics of the internet. And in a, I tried, as long as we're just not thinking in terms of horse races, like this is, you know, there's maybe a slow moving shift, maybe it'll happen in spurts. But it's, there's a lot that I don't like about the current era. And I just like, there's a thing we say internally, it's like, you know, we don't have to we don't have to accept the way it is. Right. And so that's what I'm looking at it the Fediverse Okay, what can we do? That's different from what's already been done because of this. One of the things I ended up saying a lot when I first joined is I like that it doesn't it puts you out of the mode of thinking of monopolies. Like there's just something about being an entrepreneur and an ambitious one. And the current dynamic is like, you kind of need to get to that monopoly, right? So I just don't think it's possible. And so I don't have to think that way, I can think in terms of what's unique to Medium that's valuable, that fits us, but doesn't have it doesn't have to be like world beating, it just has to be useful. And I think like, there's just so much still to come to see, you know, where, where we're going to fit and, you know, a minimum, you know, could be being a cheerleader for it. And then over time at work, I put more and more, find more and more places where we can be uniquely useful. And, and then other people are going to do other parts, and we're all going to be collaborators. And yeah, it'd be great.
Mike McCue:
I do. I think that's one of the great things that I've seen in the Fediverse. Is that come that the collaboration between people all come looking at this from different vantage points with different businesses or products that they've been doing. There's a real sense of it's almost as if we're all on the same team, you know, advancing the same idea in different different vantage points.
Tony Stubblebine:
Now. Yeah, it gives me early internet vibes. I mean, early for me was, you know, late 90s, early 2000s. But, yeah, yeah. Not Yeah. Not early, early. I didn't get to see that. But yeah, I mean, there was just a lot of Greenfield and a lot of Optimists with good hearts, you know, operating in that time.
Mike McCue:
Well, before we go, Tony, is there advice that you would give to someone who maybe hasn't done anything in the Fediverse? Yet, they've got a business. I have people ask to, you know, pay how, what's the best way for me to kind of get started on this?
Tony Stubblebine:
Yeah, like, give up all of the growth hacking nonsense. Like the Fediverse is a place to go make real relationships,
Mike McCue:
you know, in a maps to the advice you give to that writer, write something that someone's going to be impressed with? Something that someone that someone in the Fediverse is going to find useful. Right. Yeah.
Tony Stubblebine:
I mean, I know, we're trying to wrap up, but I'm just amazed by how much how little self awareness there is, around how the Internet inspired people to cheat. You know, like, I get growth hacking, I have growth hack a ton of things, right. But I always knew I was cheating the platform. Right? I never diluted. Right? And, you know, follow for follow all of that stuff, right? Like, I always knew it was cheating. I said it somehow it became so normalized. It's like, Well, how else am I gonna make a living? Except by, you know, gaming? Right.
Mike McCue:
So yeah, so, you know, that is a great point. And I think a lot of the, you know, the gaming mechanics, you know, SEO is, is kind of like, it's analogous to the engine that you had on Medium that you've now transformed. Or the lack of the direct relationship between a person and a business like it was always owned by some middle person, and trying to reach that that person that is, let's say, you're a brand, let's say, You're a really great brand, like, like a camera. So you just want to have a genuine relationship with your camera customers, or to help people understand why they should buy your camera. You don't have to go through all these middlemen to ever reach that person. And then you really don't even know who that person is. It's no, it's not the same as someone walking into your store, forming a relationship with them selling them on the merit of the product. Right. Right. And because of that, yeah, you end up gaming everything, and then you just have middlemen upon middlemen guy helping you game at all right? And they come up with these crazy terms. And these crazy ideas that you just can't even understand. Right, and it just, it's really you're taught you're so true. That's so true.
Tony Stubblebine:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, it's a it's a really interesting time. I'm glad to be in it with you.
Mike McCue:
I'm glad to be in it with you too, Tony. And I think people are gonna love hearing your, your journey here with Medium. We'll be following along with a lot of interests.
Tony Stubblebine:
Thank you for letting me share it. Thank you, Mike.
Well, thanks so much for listening.
You can follow Tony on Medium at coachtony.Medium.com. On Mastodon, he's coachtony at me dot DM.
Big thank you to our editors Rosana Caban and Anh Le.
To learn more about what Flipboard is doing in the Fediverse sign up via the link in this episode's description.
You can also follow Mike on Mastodon at Mike at Flipboard dot social.
See you in the Fediverse!