By now a lot of folks in the dev.to community are very familiar with the recent move that Free Code Camp made to get off of Medium. FCC is the lead...
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Kinda related but not... when you donate to FCC, they don't let you know the donations will be on a recurring basis; nor is there a way to stop it if you didn't contribute via a PayPal account. I misspoke, you can stop it by emailing Quincy Larson who seems to be the only person that can contact Stripe and remove your "account." Not entirely surprised practices across the board are unethical, for lack of a better term.
// , I'm skeptical of your comment, based on what I found here:
freecodecamp.org/donate
Seems pretty damn clear which is a one-time donation and which isn't.
Geeze, that's real appropriate. My comment was almost a year ago after I directly corresponded with Quincy Larson. Things were obviously different. Why would someone lie about that? Go to sleep.
I asked Quincy about getting access to remove the posts they copied over to their publication and raised a concern about their author application, which required me to grant permission to use past work (which they were already using). He said, “Don't worry about the waver - just set up a time to meet with me that's convenient and I can fill you in on everything.” It just wasn’t convenient and didn’t seem advisable to complete a form granting permission and trusting in a private DM claiming that the waiver wouldn’t really count.
I wonder if the better course of action would be if some authors, such as yourself, attempted to approach him as a group versus individually with concerns/demands for your author rights.
I believe that is called a class action. Add a lawyer to the mix, appropriate with illegal actions such as Free Code Camp's, and you can file the appropriate lawsuit. Especially in light of the fear expressed by authors. That's called intimidation and retaliation and I would advise the victims to consult a lawyer before any possible statute of limitations expires. Idk I am not a lawyer.
You have control over your content if you publish on a medium that you own and control. It's as simple as that.
// , Give some examples of TOU-free media that give us more direct control of our content.
I've continued to get DMs like this...
I was also surprised to see that FreeCodeCamp still hasn’t fixed the canonical url issue where they no longer respect the canonical url people set on Medium.
I wrongfully thought of this as a mistake they’d quickly rectify even if they didn’t right the overall wrong.
But it seems like they’re really uninterested in making even the most minimal ethical choices.
I am disappointed to see that Quincy is very arrogant in dealing with the case. Also, being a little arrogant... No one would ever think that the new news site could be a competition for dev.to 😂 I think they should just say something like this: "Well, we did it wrong. Help us do it better."
Honestly, this makes me want to no longer use the FCC community sadly.
I hate Medium with a passion. Everything there is not a paid article. I open up the app, and even any shitty article about "How to do X or Y" is now paid.
Medium is history for me, finished. I'm not even opening their newsletter anymore.
This is what happens when you trust platform that they will respect your rights. No, when something happens, they won't. If you give away the control, you have no control.
Btw, I think this is GDPR violation 🤔
Wow, this is ridiculous. I can't even fathom how those in charge would think this would be a good plan. Nevermind from a human standpoint, but even if all you care about is the business of the community it's a bad move.
I've been following this topic, and it keeps getting more and more interesting.
Glad your content was fixed in the end!
Hopefully the creator can humble himself enough to admit this was the wrong way to go about things, and move towards a solution.
Ignoring problems doesn't make them go away.
It's curious how the snowball is growing ...
// , Yet another platform risk, an example of counterparty risk.
In "The Cloud" possession is nine tenths of ownership.
That goes for medium.com and Free Code Camp as much as it goes for any website, IaaS, or game with a ToU / EULA. That includes dev.to.
If a third party asks you to trust them with control over your resources, you probably shouldn't, no matter whatever they might blather on about on an Ethics statement.
Do you? They don't just want money or protection from liability. They all want control.