u/ExtentLoose3357

Has anyone else noticed that getting into the Medium Partner Program recently feels like a rigged game? I want to see if I’m the only one experiencing this, or if there is a larger, unspoken issue happening behind the scenes.

Here is the timeline of their moving goalposts: First, the requirement was to be active for 2 months. Then, they quietly changed it to 3 months. Okay, fine. I waited, kept engaging, and met all the criteria (published over 6 high-quality stories, active for 3+ months, strictly no copy-pasting, original cross-disciplinary analysis, 18+, supported country).

I applied, and almost immediately got hit with a boilerplate "you do not currently meet our eligibility criteria" rejection, with zero specific feedback, just a vague suggestion to look at their "Staff Picks."

This leads me to a few serious questions for this community:

1. Is Medium running out of money? Are subscriber numbers dropping to the point where they literally can't admit new writers? Is the only way they can keep payouts high for the established "old boys' club" to artificially gatekeep new creators with moving goalposts and phantom "quality" standards?
2. Is the "AI Detection" just masking bias against non-Western/translated content? My niche involves translating ancient Eastern philosophy/strategy and analyzing it through modern behavioral economics. It's heavy, structured work. Are their flawed AI detectors or biased reviewers just automatically rejecting non-Western topics, translated works, or non-native English writers because our phrasing doesn't sound like a typical American tech-bro blog?
3. Who else is getting blocked at the door? If you met all the hard numbers (followers, posts, time) but got rejected for invisible "quality" reasons recently, drop your experience below.

It feels like the platform preaches "open sharing" but operates like an exclusionary club protecting a shrinking pie. Is it time to just use Medium as a free billboard and move everything to Substack/KDP?