Active Suspension
One of the biggest risks of using a platform is being de-platformed. A few days ago I noticed my read count on Medium was dropping to 0. I don’t get many readers, but my ego likes to know that someone consumes the thoughts I put down here.
But nada…
Looking further, it seems all of the links to my articles are showing 404 errors and that when you visit me on https://medium.com/@Grebler and you’re not logged into Medium, you get a notification that the account has been suspended.
That’s scary! I’ve never received any warning from Medium and have posted daily for 2.5 years.
While I’m optimistic that the issue will be resolved, this does serve as a great reminder of the concentration of power that happens on the web and the even greater dangers of something like net neutrality disappearing.
What if you were banned from using Google tomorrow?
What if you couldn’t order anything from Amazon any longer?
What if you couldn’t touch an Apple product?
Worse, what if all your work stored on these services or devices?
We can’t assume that any platform is stable. The Internet is a disruption tool. It can also be disrupted.
