Medium is a great writing platform, but it's also home to a few less-than-stellar people. These people will try to grab your attention by liking your random comments, following your account without any interaction, leaving AI comments, or using AI to mass-produce content.

If you check your stats, you might notice that your views continue to rise while your reads drop. A poor read ratio impacts your earnings and it also limits how your articles are distributed across the platform.

How I'm Dealing With These Fake Accounts

If someone randomly claps on a large number of my articles, I'm more than happy to give you the attention you desire by writing an article and showing the screenshots. Unfortunately, most people are more sneaky and it can be difficult to catch them.

I plan to clean things up by blocking people who only use AI to create their copy-and-paste content without any disclosure, and I'll also block someone if I keep getting random claps on my comments.

Why Do People Randomly Clap on Comments?

Some accounts only randomly clap on comments on other articles. I have no idea if a real person is doing this or if it's the activity of a bot. Nearly all of these accounts use AI to create content, and I'm tired of seeing it.

I've already blocked many followers, and it's amazing how many people are using AI to publish articles. If someone is too lazy to write, they will also be too lazy to spend time reading and genuinely interacting with your content.

If You Aren't a Member, You Are Probably Getting Blocked

I also don't understand why people write on Medium without spending five bucks a month to have access to any article. It also doesn't make sense to follow others because you are not going to be able to see their content.

I understand if the account is no longer active, but I think it's cheap to publish articles and expect others to read your content if you aren't a member.

Long-Term Process That Won't Happen Overnight

Doing this will take a lot of time because I have around 3,600 followers. Many of these followers are from back in 2020, and they are no longer active. My goal is to clean up my list by blocking all of the non-paying active members who never read my articles anyway.

I will also block all of the fake accounts using AI or the clap and runners. Things will never be perfect, but things seem to be getting worse on Medium. I hope there isn't a limit on the number of accounts that can be blocked.

Thank you for reading. I really do appreciate the many genuine people here. I still think Medium is a great place to be, but it only takes a few hundred scammers to ruin the experience.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on how you deal with these accounts in the comments.