How do you feel when you lost a 6-years old Medium account with 1.4K followers, and 376 articles.

On 8th May, 2024, the same thing happened to me when I woke up in the morning and checked my Medium stats. I got this notification on the top of the medium stats dashboard.

First, I thought it was just a glitch, so I opened up my laptop and login to my Medium Dashboard… that notification bar was still intact. To ensure, I copied one of my story links and paste it in a different browser and I saw this…

I felt anxious. Tears started to roll over my cheeks. I couldn’t control my emotions.

I was there for 6 years, and they suspended my account without any prior warning. I admit that I could have made mistakes and infringed upon Medium’s content policies.

BUT, It really kills me inside…

With the pain in my chest, I started digging to investigate why did medium suspend my account?

I read Medium’s content policy guidelines and found a little snippet talking about third party advertising.

Here it is…

I found this resonating to me because I did a third party advertising recently.

With this, I immediately removed that post with the hope that it will help reinstate my account.

SO, I crossed my finger and contacted Medium support team via email at trust@medium.com

Here is what I wrote…

Dear Medium Support Team,

I was concerned to discover that my Medium account (@beginnersblog) has been flagged for a rules violation. I take Medium’s community guidelines very seriously and want to ensure that all my content aligns with your standards.

I sincerely apologize for any unintentional oversights. I greatly value being a part of the Medium community and aim to be a positive contributor. If there’s a way to resolve this violation and restore my account, I would be extremely grateful.

Would it be possible to get more information about the specific content that caused the violation? I’m committed to correcting any issues and would immediately address or remove any problematic posts.

I waited 12–18 hours and finally got a response saying, your account is suspended and can’t be reinstated.

Here is the exact response I got from Medium Support…

My account was found in violation of the Site Policies, which strictly prohibit posting content primarily to drive traffic to, or increase the search rankings of, an external site, product, or service.

They also told me, “The account is not eligible for restoration.” That means it’s gone…

However, I can still access my account and stories. But if someone clicks my stories, they’ll be redirected to a 410 ERROR page that says, “This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules.”

I never thought I’d lose my account after six years for something I’ve been doing since I started on Medium.

If I was violating Medium’s rules for years, why didn’t they suspend my account earlier?

Well, whatever the case, I can’t do anything about it. I have to admit that I was a little unaware of Medium rules & policies.

That’s it!

Before signing off, I want to share some lessons I’ve learned from this event and what you should and shouldn’t be doing to avoid being suspended on Medium.

Lesson Learned

1. Never rely on one platform whether it’s Medium, Google, Pinterest or LinkedIn.
2. Always read Rules & guidelines before getting starting with any platform. You can use ChatGPT to summarize the policy & rule to read them quickly and understand the guidelines.
3. Medium love original & personal experience type stories without external links.
4. Nobody is going to help you. Remember, you rarely get second chance. if you have no time.

What you should OR shouldn’t be doing on Medium to avoid being suspended

1. Always consider your Medium account a separate blog, don’t mix it with your own blog (if you have one).
2. Write short and meaningful stories that resonate with people.
3. Stay away from AI because Medium hate AI generated stories. Only use AI for outlining, proofreading, and title generation.
4. Don’t spam your story with external links (aka your personal blog links, affiliate links etc.). Medium hate external links. they wants readers to spend more time reading stories on their platform.
5. Don’t spam comments on other’s Medium stories in order to drive more people to your profile.
6. Don’t publish third party advertising or sponsored posts to make money.
7. Don’t copy-paste other’s stories and use spin-bots to rewrite them.
8. Always respect Medium rules & policies.
9. When you import a story from your personal blog, always review it and remove excessive external links to align the story with Medium rules.
10. Never promote a link within your story that contains hateful speech, pornography, counterfeit products, OR illegal stuff like weapon and drugs.
11. Don’t use medium just for driving traffic to a blog, product, or service.
12. Be authentic.

I hope it helps… If you found this post helpful, please leave claps, comments and share it. Your support will be appreciated!

Conclusion

Medium is a powerful platform. But if you don’t take it seriously, like I do, all your work could vanish in an instant. So always follow the rules and write ethically.