Medium account is locked + recovery method｜Retrieving a suspended Medium account

This article records the process from finding out that my Medium account was locked, contacting customer service, backing up data, and restoring the account to normal, which took about three days to process.

Since this has happened for the second time this year, I don't want to fall into catch-22 of "I wrote an article on how to deal with the account being suspended, but I can't see the article because the account status is currently suspended", so the backup is here. The original article was published on Medium in September.

discovery process

Last Friday, I opened two browsers and checked whether the layout of the publication was normal in the logged-in/unlogged state. When I came back a few hours later, after re-updating, the window without my personal account actually displayed "This page is unavailable". (This page cannot be displayed). Originally thought that publications have the distinction of online/offline, maybe you have to check the action such as bring this publication online in the option somewhere to see it.

But when I tried to enter the author's personal page, I was greeted with another 410 error message: "this account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules ."

Only then did I know that my account was banned (closer to shadowban, because the author himself would not find out when he was logged in). When I checked my email to see why my account was locked, I found that Medium never notified me from beginning to end. Saw this while perusing Medium Rules trying to clarify the situation:

We strive to be fair, but we reserve the right to suspend accounts or remove content, without notice , for any reason, particularly to protect our services, infrastructure, users, or community.

(Medium will not notify when the account is suspended!)

Contact Medium Customer Service

According to the Medium Rules , if you need an appeal, you can write to yourfriends@medium.com to contact customer service.

At this time, I have already climbed a lot of articles ( victims #1 , #2 , #3 ), and I believe that it should not be my own problem, so I am not too worried. But after all, there are many uncertain factors, or contact us first. After writing a simple email to notify the customer service, all I can do is wait. Unfortunately, the contact time happened to be Friday evening US time. If the support is not around the clock, it may take several days to hear back.

backup data

Of course, during the waiting process, we have to consider the worst case, that is, what to do if the account does not come back, so I started to look for the next suitable platform by the way. Also, if you need to backup/export data from Medium, the location is here:

• Click on the top right photo > settings
• Settings > Account
• Account > Download your information > “Download .zip”

After clicking, an email will be sent to you, which is the download link of the zip file. The downloaded zip contains the html of all personal data , including photos, self introduction bio, all published & unpublished articles.

But there is a disadvantage (it should be a bug), when the account is in the suspended state, the link will display 5xx error (server-side problem), so if the account needs to be backed up when it is locked, it is recommended to send a letter directly to customer service Ask for help, or wait a few days until the account is back to normal and then try to download, I've got my account back and try again without encountering any problems.

Customer Service Response｜Account Responded to Normal

On Sunday evening, I received a response from Medium, saying that the account has returned to normal and the articles can be seen. The total processing time is a little more than two days, which is much faster than I thought.

It looks like your Medium account was mistakenly caught in our spam filter. I have now restored your account and all your posts. We apologize for this inconvenience.

But I didn't explain exactly what the conditions of the spam filter were. I always felt that I would probably repeat the crime (crow's mouth, knock on wood) in the future (the result was the second time). In conclusion, it is safer to set up a station or back up.

The worries of posting on Medium

There are a few things about this experience that made me feel bad:

1. There is no notification at all. If users are not proactive, they may not find out that they have been banned at all.
2. I still don't know the exact reason why the account is locked, it may still happen to you and me in the future
3. If you do not contact customer service, it seems that the system will not find the error on its own and automatically unlock it for the user
4. While the account is suspended, the articles published by the author cannot be seen on Medium. Instead of all the old articles still exist, but after clicking on the author page, it shows "This author no longer exists". I really don't like this: let's say today there is an alt-right character I hate to post on Medium, and assuming most of his articles are written rationally, so even if I disagree with his arguments, I think he It is necessary for the existence of the article, but if this person posts an extreme article that crosses the line and is suspended, if these old articles are not carefully searched, readers will not be able to see them on Medium.
5. In Medium Rules , crypto is still strictly controlled. Authors who specialize in virtual currency may need to pay attention to it.

happens a second time

Yesterday (11/13) I found that the account was suspended again, and I dug out the email string that I contacted customer service before. This time I was too lazy to explain like the last time. It may be because of the previous history, but this time it was faster. After the notification, support was processed within 15 hours.

Future prevention, self-checking, coping methods

(Why is this title like preventing STD or something?) Since Medium will not give special notice, if the author wants to check whether he has been banned, the most direct way is to try to access his own website without logging in. But who is so idle to check every day. Another convenient way to check is to click into your stats in the upper right corner. If the traffic on that day is completely 0, it is very likely that your account has been suspended.

In terms of prevention, generally speaking, "don't do things that look like bots do", such as a large number of clapping/messaging/crazy page washing from the same IP in a short period of time, but in the case where Medium has not announced what the standard is, We can only guess the possible factors that may trigger its filtering mechanism, and then contact the official as soon as we find it.

Regular backup is really important. If possible, it is even recommended to publish articles on more than one platform (if you are very concerned about the disappearance of articles) (again reiterate the importance of offsite backup), if you do not want to be restricted, you can host it yourself, and other publishing platforms can consider writing .as or Matters .