.png)
3 hours ago
1
Let me tell you about the email I can’t send.
I’ve been writing on Medium for five years. Built up a decent following—nothing spectacular, but real people who clicked that “notify me by email” button because they wanted to hear from me specifically.
Then one morning in April 2025, Medium changed the rules. Quietly. No announcement. No migration plan. Just a single line buried in their help docs:
“Email addresses are no longer shared with writers when readers subscribe to receive email notifications about stories from a writer.”
Just like that, everyone who subscribed after April became invisible.
The Moment I Realized What Happened
I was setting up my own newsletter. Not to leave Medium—I still valued the platform—but to have my own channel. A backup. A direct line.
You know, like every creator is supposed to do.
I went to export my subscriber list. The one I’d spent five years building. The people who explicitly said “yes, I want to hear from you.”
The export worked. I got a CSV file.
But it only had my old subscribers. Everyone from before April 2025. Everyone after? Gone. Hidden. Locked behind Medium’s wall.
Not deleted. Medium still has those emails. They still use them to send my posts. They just won’t let me see them.
This Isn’t About Privacy
Medium’s excuse? “Privacy protection.”
Let me be clear: I care deeply about reader privacy. I don’t want to spam people. I don’t want to sell email lists. I want to communicate with people who asked to hear from me.
But here’s the thing about Medium’s “privacy” argument—it’s bullshit.
Substack gives writers email addresses. ConvertKit does. Ghost does. Every newsletter platform that respects both readers and writers does. And they all comply with GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and every other privacy regulation.
How? By making the subscription terms clear. By requiring double opt-in. By giving readers easy unsubscribe options. By treating email as what it actually is: a communication channel with clear consent on both sides.
Medium isn’t protecting reader privacy. They’re protecting their own control.
They have your subscribers’ emails. They use them. They send newsletters with advanced tools you can’t access. They segment audiences. They optimize delivery.
You? You get nothing. Not the emails. Not the names. Not even basic metadata about who these people are or when they subscribed.
Just a subscriber count. A vanity metric. A number that goes up while your actual connection to those readers gets weaker.
The Pattern I Should Have Seen Coming
This isn’t Medium’s first move like this.
They killed custom domains for non-paying writers. Then they killed the Partner Program for most people. Then they made it harder to drive external traffic. Each change optimized for Medium’s business model while extracting value from writers.
I justified each one. “They need to make money.” “It’s their platform.” “They’re trying to create quality.”
But the subscriber email change is different. It’s not about improving quality. It’s not about sustainable business models.
It’s about making sure you can never truly own your audience. Even when that audience explicitly chose to follow you.
What the Export File Reveals
I exported my “legacy” list—the subscribers from before April who I can still access.
The CSV file is bare bones: just email addresses, no names, no subscription dates, no context about what they’re interested in or which posts brought them in.
More importantly? It came with zero documentation about consent. Under GDPR, I’m supposed to be able to prove these people opted in. Medium gives me no way to do that.
So even the emails I can export are legally questionable to use. They’re compliant enough for Medium to send to, but not documented enough for me to migrate anywhere else without risk.
That’s not an accident. That’s by design.
The Emails I Can’t Send
Here’s what I can’t do now:
I can’t invite my subscribers to follow my journey beyond Medium. I can’t tell them about projects I’m building. I can’t share early access to tools I create. I can’t ask them for feedback on new directions.
Not because they don’t want to hear from me. But because Medium won’t let me reach them directly.
Every new subscriber after April 2025 is stuck in Medium’s ecosystem. They think they’re following me. They’re actually following Medium’s curated version of me.
And if Medium changes their algorithm tomorrow? If they decide my content doesn’t fit their new priorities? If they shut down?
Those subscribers disappear. Forever.
Why This Matters (Even If You’re Not on Medium)
You might be thinking: “I don’t write on Medium, so this doesn’t affect me.”
Wrong.
This is about the fundamental relationship between creators and platforms. About who owns the audience. About whether you’re building a business or just renting space in someone else’s.
Medium is just the latest example. Twitter locked down API access. Instagram killed chronological feeds. YouTube changed monetization requirements overnight. TikTok bans accounts without explanation.
Every platform follows the same playbook:
- Make it easy to grow an audience
- Wait until you’re invested
- Change the rules to extract more value
- Justify it with vague appeals to “community” or “safety”
- Watch creators scramble to adapt
The email change is Medium admitting what we should have known all along: you were never building your audience. You were building theirs.
What I’m Doing Now
I’m not leaving Medium immediately. The distribution is still valuable. The writing interface is still good. But I’m treating it differently now.
Every new post starts with a clear CTA: “I write a weekly newsletter at meysam.io. This is where I share lessons Medium won’t let me talk about. Where I build in public. Where I can actually reach you if Medium changes the rules again.”
I’m aggressive about moving people to my own platform: Not spammy. Not manipulative. Just honest: “If you want the unfiltered version of this journey, here’s where to find it.”
I’m treating Medium like what it is: A discovery platform, not a home. A place to meet readers, not keep them.
And I’m exporting everything I can while I still can. Because if Medium changed subscriber policies this quietly, what’s next? When do they lock down even the legacy lists?
How I Actually Did It (The Technical Part)
Setting up my own newsletter wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be.
I’m running Listmonk—an open-source newsletter platform—on a €12/month server. It took one Saturday afternoon to set up. Now I have unlimited subscribers, full control of my data, and zero platform risk.
No monthly fees that scale with my list size. No terms of service that can change overnight. No company that can decide my subscribers are actually their subscribers.
The whole setup: PostgreSQL database, automated backups, SSL certificates, modern UI for managing campaigns. All self-hosted. All mine.
I’m writing a complete guide on how to replicate this setup—every command, every configuration file, every decision point. Not because self-hosting is the only answer, but because you should know it’s possible. Because “too technical” shouldn’t be the reason you stay dependent on platforms that don’t have your interests at heart.
If you want to own your audience infrastructure the way I do, that guide drops next week.
It’s detailed. It’s tested in production. And it assumes you’re smart enough to follow along even if you’ve never touched Kubernetes before.
For the Subscribers I Can’t Reach
If you subscribed to my Medium updates after April 2025, I want you to know something:
You chose to follow my work. Not Medium’s work. Mine.
But I can’t reach you directly anymore. I can’t tell you about projects I’m building. I can’t share early access to tools. I can’t ask for your feedback on new ideas.
Not because I don’t want to. But because Medium won’t let me.
If you’re reading this on Medium right now, and you care about staying connected beyond this platform, here’s what you can do: visit my website and sign up there. It takes 30 seconds. And it means I can actually reach you—on my terms, on your terms—not Medium’s.
No pressure. No manipulation. Just an honest ask: if you want a direct connection, here’s how.
The Lesson I’m Learning Too Late
Five years ago, when I started on Medium, someone told me: “Own your audience. Build your email list. Never rely on any single platform.”
I nodded. I agreed. Then I ignored it because Medium was working and building my own platform felt like too much work.
Now I understand what they meant.
It’s not that Medium is evil. It’s that they have different incentives than you do. They optimize for engagement and revenue. You optimize for connection and sustainability.
Those goals aligned for a while. Now they don’t.
The subscriber email change isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. It’s Medium telling you exactly where you stand: you’re valuable to them as content supply, not as an independent creator.
What You Should Do
If you’re writing on Medium—or any platform you don’t own—here’s what I wish I’d done earlier:
Start your own newsletter today. Not next month. Not when you “have time.” Today. Substack, Ghost, ConvertKit, hell even just a simple email list through your website. Doesn’t matter. Just start.
Put a clear CTA in every post. Not buried at the end. Not subtle. Obvious. “I send a weekly email about [thing]. Sign up at [place].”
Be honest about why. Don’t pretend you’re doing readers a favor. Tell them the truth: “I’m building on platforms I don’t control. If you want to stay connected regardless of what those platforms decide, here’s where to find me.”
Export everything you can, now. Whatever access you have to subscriber data, export it today. Back it up. Document it. Because if platforms are tightening control, assume it’s going to get worse.
Treat platforms like what they are. Discovery channels. Traffic sources. Not homes. You’re renting, not owning.
The Part That Hurts
I’m not mad at Medium. I’m mad at myself.
I saw the signs. I heard the warnings. I knew better.
But I got comfortable. I liked watching that subscriber count go up. I liked the validation of “X people want to hear from you.”
I just didn’t realize that “X people” wasn’t mine. It was Medium’s. And when they decided to stop sharing, I had no recourse.
Zero customers taught me that distribution matters more than product.
Hidden subscribers taught me that audience access matters more than audience size.
Both lessons cost me months of work. Both are obvious in hindsight.
I’m sharing this now because someone reading this is making the same mistake I made. You’re building on a platform. You’re comfortable. It’s working.
Until it isn’t.
And by the time you realize you should have owned your audience, it’s too late to export the emails they hid.
If you subscribed to my Medium updates after April 2025 and you’re reading this, I genuinely wish I could reach you directly. If you want to stay connected beyond Medium’s decisions, visit meysam.io. That’s the only place I can actually promise you’ll hear from me.
Everyone else: learn from my mistake. Own your audience. Today.
