Is That Email from Medium a Joke?

Last Friday I received The Edition, the weekly newsletter for Medium members.

How do I know it’s not from Medium?

To begin with, the editorial piece is entirely about the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. It seems that the President did not attend and there was a performance by a comedian. It also refers to two Medium stories on the topic “worth your time.” One of the two is a member feature story.

Now, let’s talk seriously.

The actual Medium VP would have never written that piece. It’s just signed so to seem more real.

Medium gathers authors and readers from all the planet. Indeed, the chief editor of Medium would never on the earth focus her editorial on a minor event at the White House.

I live in Italy, and we are currently without the government. It’s a major issue. I’m sure that my friends in France, in China, in Argentina, and so on, are currently facing different but major issues in their countries too. Indeed, they won’t read the two stories “worth your time.”

Not that they’re not interested in facts in the US. It depends on the facts.

Not to mention that Medium readers hope to find a place far from the “noise of the Internet,” where to read insightful or amusing pieces and, maybe, even some poetry. The news is important, but I’m sure the chief editor of Medium has something else to say here.

In the following of the email, I find four featured stories.

You can guess the first one.

It’s about Bitcoins.

Another evidence that’s impossible that this is an e-mail from the Medium VP.

The second article starts with guns and ends with rifles.

The third is on Facebook.

The fourth is about “Data Violence.”

I’m sure these are all insightful and nonobvious pieces, but I’m not clicking on them because it’s impossible that Medium dedicated time to feature a poker of stories on trendy topics, instead of digging in the huge world of philosophy, narrative, poetry, psychology, experiences, and so on. It’s just impossible.

The fact that the rest of the email also contains the usual Trump keyword does not help credibility.

One last thing.

In a tentative of making the email more credible, the evildoers also referred to minor Medium improvements in the Apps, like the new “carousel” highlighting featured stories. So that it’s now impossible to miss your stories on Bitcoins, Trump, Facebook, and guns. And your body. Featured because of the reading interests of the Medium readers. Far from the noise of the Internet.

If the email were from Medium, it would mention more interesting and much-needed features, like a customized profile page, a decent reading list, a compact and filterable view for the notifications, and so on.

That mail is an obvious fake, but I’m worried.

What should I do, now?

I can’t unsubscribe because, if it’s a virus, they want me precisely to hit that link. Then, they would steal my weight track and publish it on Facebook.

But I’m really afraid of receiving another one.

By the way. Has someone received the real The edition from Medium?

Related posts:

It can be difficult to write good, engaging content if you’re not confident about where to begin and how to organize your thoughts. If you want to become a skilled writer with an audience of…

Although managed services growth is steady, as customer support outsourcing matures, the prevalence for working with the lowest cost customer support provider is diminishing. Developing a strategic…

Remembrance Day is an annual observance for those who died fighting for Britain. Every single British soldier, from every conflict since the end of world war one, is remembered with pride across the…