Does Medium Have a Plagiarism Problem?

Shortly before Christmas, the YouTube channel Brew uploaded a video titled “We’re Getting Robbed.”

The video focused heavily on the writing platform Medium, where writers can publish their work and, if they participate in the site’s partner program, earn revenue from their writing.

I’ve discussed Medium before when examining their new policy against AI writing. However, this video highlighted a very different problem.

According to Brew, several authors on Medium were taking transcripts of their videos, which are generated automatically by YouTube, and using them to create plagiarized articles. This often took the form of verbatim plagiarism, but in some cases it involved rewritten text or text that was most likely summarized by an AI system.

The plagiarism they found wasn’t limited to just their channel. They found videos from dozens of other channels that were similarly copied. Though most of the plagiarized posts didn’t do particularly well, at least one was shared in a prominent Medium publication and received hundreds of thousands of views.

So does Medium have a plagiarism problem? If so, what can or should it do about it? The answers are surprisingly complicated.

A YouTube for Writers

Disclosure: I am an occasional writer on Medium and am a member of the partner program. However, I have never received more than I’ve spent and mostly use the site for reading.

Brew refers to Medium as a YouTube for writers. In most ways, that’s an apt analogy.

Medium is a space where anyone can upload content and, if they are a member of the partner program, can earn revenue from those uploads.

Medium also has publications that function somewhat like YouTube channels, allowing users to subscribe. However, content in the publications isn’t just from the editors; it can be any content selected on the site.

But there are several key differences. First, Medium doesn’t have ads, and both the site and its writers earn money solely from paid memberships. Access to the profit sharing is gatekept behind the membership requirement. In short, you have to be a paid member to earn revenue from other paid members.

That last element is one of the more controversial among Medium’s supporters and critics alike. The “pay to play” system can feel unfair, but it also, most likely, reduces the number of plagiarists or other unethical actors who exploit it.

Though $5 per month or $50 per year is not a huge amount of money, it’s more than most authors will likely make.

But that obviously doesn’t stop the plagiarists completely. The accounts Brew found were members of the partner program. However, it’s unlikely that they made a profit, even with a couple of popular posts.

But, if that’s not enough to keep the plagiarists at bay, what else can they do? Well, they can borrow another idea from YouTube.

Content ID for Text

Another major difference between Medium and YouTube is that YouTube uses Content ID to catch infringing material before it’s uploaded. Medium does not have anything comparable.

To be clear, Content ID is an imperfect system that often creates problems of its own. But, according to YouTube’s own numbers, Content ID handles over 99% of all copyright issues on the site.

Text is fundamentally easier to search for, so while creating a similar system for Medium would be a challenge, it should be more than doable.

But there would be two obstacles to that.

First, there are times and situations where uploading duplicate content is not just acceptable on Medium, but encouraged. Medium even offers a tool to import an existing site to Medium, either as a primary or secondary publication.

To be clear, this system is not locked down in any way. You can, under the current implementation, import nearly any story from any site you want. You can also remove the “canonical” link and have your post compete directly with the original post.

The second problem is the one highlighted in the Brew video, that much of this plagiarism comes from video transcripts. These are automatically generated for accessibility but do not appear in search results or plagiarism detection tools.

This has been an issue not just on Medium but also in academia. Historically, if you wanted your plagiarism to go undetected, the easiest ways were to plagiarize translated sources or to plagiarize across formats. Whether going from Spanish to English or from video to text, laundering plagiarized content through a medium remains incredibly effective.

What I Would Do

If I could wave a magic wand and address Medium’s challenges in this space. I would immediately do two things.

First, I would immediately lock down the import tool. It shouldn’t be possible to import any article from any site without some kind of verification. Even something as simple as how Mastodon handles verification would be a major help.

Second, I would implement a YouTube-style content monitoring system. I wouldn’t start out aggressively with it, but the fact remains that the easiest time to detect plagiarism is before it’s published. Even with blind spots, something is better than nothing.

However, the specific challenge that Brew is facing can’t really be solved by Medium. It would require YouTube and other audio/video sites to make transcripts available to both search engines and plagiarism detection tools.

This has been a known issue for many years and has only gotten worse with AI transcripts. There are valid reasons not to promote transcripts heavily. They are often unreliable; they may contain significant misinformation, and they aren’t intended for use other than accessibility.

While such a move could make it easier to search for and find videos, that’s already a solved problem, and poorly transcribed transcripts could actually make things worse.

In short, the main benefit would be the anti-plagiarism one, and that likely isn’t enough to justify YouTube jumping on board.

Bottom Line

So, does Medium have a plagiarism problem? Yes. But so does every user-generated content site.

I could easily say the same thing about Substack, Tumblr, WordPress.com and any other site where users can upload text and images.

Are there any ways Medium could improve? Absolutely. Locking down their import tool and implementing proactive content checks would help. However, there’s no magic bullet to make all the plagiarism go away.

In my experience (and also Brew’s), Medium responds very quickly to notices of plagiarism and/or copyright infringement. They comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and fulfill their obligations under the law.

Could they do more? Yes. Should they do more? Also yes. But Medium isn’t a panacea for plagiarism. The plagiarists who are there likely don’t make any money and remain mostly in the dregs of the site.

Fortunately, the needed changes aren’t that difficult, and Medium has a natural example in YouTube. If they want to make these improvements, I feel confident they can.

It’s simply a matter of will, not ability.