He is missing an important point here that is well illustrated by his coffee metaphor: I don't go to Starbucks, but I don't make my espresso drinks at home either -- I go to smaller coffee shops for two things: convenience, which he acknowledges, and what he ignores -- specialized expertise.
I could spend time learning how to make a good latte or mocha at home, but right now I don't want to; I have better things to do. And in the short term, what I could manage by myself probably won't be as good what I get poured at the small shop down the street.
Similarly, everyone who wants to write online could learn all the web tech, but using Medium is, yes, easier, but also probably results in a higher quality product (in both presentation and especially distribution) than what they will manage on their own in the short term. There is expertise that's gone into Medium that many writers don't have or want to acquire (yet).
Sure censorship can be an issue, but I don't believe that these skills are becoming impossible to pick up when they become needed, as he seems to imply. Use Medium or Svbtle or whatever while they work and move off when they actually become a problem, or simple when your time and interests change enough that you actually want to pick up web development (or espresso brewing) expertise.
A small coffee shop would align with the author's intent. The post favors distribution over centralization; federation, so long as it's into small-enough chunks, tends to do the same thing.
But at the moment, Medium is a small(er) platform. If my local coffee shop does a hugely successful business and is pushed by the market or management decisions to resemble the Starbucks he describes, I will probably find a new one.
I don't understand why the author thinks Medium is already Starbucks just cause of its pedigree -- if Jerry Baldwin or Gordon Bowker (Ev Williams) started a new coffee shop, partially cause they were dissatisfied with what Starbucks (Blogger) had become, I think I'd be willing to give it a try at least. But maybe that makes me foolish.
distribution doesn't necessarily mean doing everything yourself. imagine a world where you picked a service to publish your blog posts on, and your readers could choose what service they read those posts on. the publish and read services could be totally different, just as long as they are interoperable (for the sake of argument, let's call this compatibility layer "RSS"). if you don't want keywords like bitcoin filtered out of your posts, you just have to choose a publishing service that allows it. if your readers want to read posts about bitcoin, they have to choose a reader service that allows that. neither your choice nor theirs impacts anybody but the person making the choice.
if you use a centralized service, your choice of service impacts your readers. you are making decisions for your whole network, not just for yourself. the problem isn't htat some services suck, the problem is that when you choose a service that sucks, you are implicitly promoting that shittiness through the network effect. decentralization solves this.
I could spend time learning how to make a good latte or mocha at home, but right now I don't want to; I have better things to do. And in the short term, what I could manage by myself probably won't be as good what I get poured at the small shop down the street.
Similarly, everyone who wants to write online could learn all the web tech, but using Medium is, yes, easier, but also probably results in a higher quality product (in both presentation and especially distribution) than what they will manage on their own in the short term. There is expertise that's gone into Medium that many writers don't have or want to acquire (yet).
Sure censorship can be an issue, but I don't believe that these skills are becoming impossible to pick up when they become needed, as he seems to imply. Use Medium or Svbtle or whatever while they work and move off when they actually become a problem, or simple when your time and interests change enough that you actually want to pick up web development (or espresso brewing) expertise.