How To Upset Everyone on Medium, tell the truth about Data Science.

Okay, perhaps not everyone but wow there are some touchy people out there.

I don’t think I’ve laughed as much as I have in the last week since publishing my last post, How To Make $1,000,000 a Year In Data Science and Machine Learning. There are a few reasons…..

“This Clickbait Article……”

Have you actually read some of the other data science posts that are out there? A lot of them have clickbaity titles too and they show up in people’s daily digest email (we’ll get on that a bit more in a moment). But, because they click on the clickbaity link, probably thinking, “This really looks clickbaity”, they get outraged that their assumptions are confirmed.

How Did This End Up In My Email?

Well rest assured I had nothing to do with it. I’ll show you the stats (trust me I’ve got friends in marketing asking me how the hell I did it). I DID NOTHING but someone or something out there did.

“Chosen for further distribution”

That’s the bit that’s interesting to me, it’s got flagged up somehow and it not by my doing but by you, dear reader, you’re responsible for its success, I just wrote a stupid post.

The thing is, if I want to get that kind of views again I’ll have to outrage you all again.

Does Medium Have Quality Control?

Probably not, not the way some people think they are to be treated.

“It’s shameful that cheap click baits, such as this article, started to encroach on as reputable a platform as Medium. I strongly suggest Medium’s editorial team should remove the article and issue a serious warning to the writer not to repeat this behaviour and waste our time again!”

I couldn’t get upset by Mr Shibab’s comment, I wonder if all the NLP in the world would work out this is not a serious article? Is there a Medium editorial team, I’m sure I’ll find out in due course.

It got better:

“This article is really deceiving! The title tries to attract people with financial motives or due to curiosity and waste their time. Worst than that, eliminates their trust in general about the articles’ title and the education out there. This is fraud in my view!! BUT, apparently everyone is free to write and everyone is free NOT to read!”

You had a choice, free will choice. You made a decision and clicked on the title, full well knowing it looked too good to be true, a parody perhaps, clickbaity even. You chose to look because you wanted to make a million and it didn’t tell you…. fraud!

No, it’s not fraud. It’s nonsense (someone actually pointed that in a comment too, I confirmed that their assumptions were right). Once you learn you have free will, choice and you are old enough to make judgements and decisions then the world will look like a different and better place.

What I found interesting also what the number of commenters who left their comment, let me read it, let me reply and then deleted their accounts. Pretty lame in my opinion. I read all the comments and responded to a fair few of them. Those who got it was parody and commented in the same way back, thanks, it made me giggle a lot.

If someone call Laura can get it, so can you:

Looking at a headline: “what is this clickbait”

After reading: “absolute masterpiece, 10/10”

Thanks Laura.

“HOW DID THIS GET ON MY DAILY EMAIL?!?!?! etc”

It’s not shown up on my email, that’s for sure.

For those whining that they got the link to the article, ah well, sucks doesn’t it. You should see some of the Data Science nonsense that winds up on mine trying to look serious. My career in data lets me know when something doesn’t smell right.

So, let’s assume that Medium daily digests are NOT manually curated. It’s algorithmic, it has to be….. oh I wrote two books on the subject, so might not be a fraud after all.

The currency is attention, that’s it. That’s all there is to it, article quality, composition and all the rest of it I’m fairly confident the algorithm doesn’t care about.

PS: I’m a huge fan of the Elo Rating System, I wonder if you pitted mine algorithmically against someone else’s sensible post, I wonder how it would look?

How did I look reading the comments?

Kinda like this, but with a beer as I don’t smoke.

Shame on your for those who do smoke, my moral outrage is on Medium for all to see! :)