According to Publishing Platform Medium, it is still committed to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), despite many other US tech companies reducing their efforts in this sector to appease the Trump administration. In a blog post published Monday, Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine supported the company’s diverse community and said companies don’t need to choose inclusion and profit.
Furthermore, the CEO pointed out that more people value “understanding and respecting hatred and division,” explaining that culture wars and screaming for others are not effective ways to change minds.
As a publishing platform, Stubblebine says that people who come to the site to benefit from moderate voices and expand their understanding of the world view diversity as strength rather than a threat.
“To understand the full context of a situation, you need to hear from someone with a different life experience than you do,” the executive wrote. “The perspectives of people in marginalized communities are important perspectives worth listening to.”
He also argued that diversity is a competitive advantage.
“As CEO, I am confident that embracing diversity as a strategy will improve our business, culture and intellectual capabilities,” he writes.
Furthermore, the company’s policy focuses on building a civic platform for readers and writers that is not tolerated, rather than “the threat of hateful content, violence, harassment, racial slander, facilitating pseudoscience or disinformation, harmful stereotypes, intentional personal misconceptions, and threats to the community.”
This contrasts with Medium’s competitors’ policies that guide Subscack, taking a more “free speech” approach to content moderation. This allowed white nationalists to find a place above the subsack, leading to user backlash.
Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie has documented the story saying she didn’t believe “censorship” measures, including the promo netting of the blog, would be eliminated.
The medium takes a different approach. And when maintaining DEI policies is politicized, it is a position that only a handful of companies are willing to take.
Across the US, large companies such as McDonald’s, Harley-Davidson, Booze Allen, John Deere, Lowes, Ford, Molson Coors, Walmart and Target have rolled back DEI’s policies. Meanwhile, Apple, Delta, Costco, Jpmorgan and McKinsey said they will continue to be committed to diversity efforts.
Medium was founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and Stubblebine took over the role of CEO as Williams became the chairman of the board in July 2022. The company today claims it has over 1 million members (paid subscribers) and reaches 100 million people each month, including both readers and writers. The company reported its first profitable month last summer, but as a private company, it has not reported any revenue.