it's a figurative euphemism - when a big company buys a blogging platform, changes the privacy policies and bans content, you can say they "shut it down".. like how the cops can shutdown a house party

Whatever google has or has not done, that's not why I can't get traction. That's not it.

blogger's founder went on to create Medium after being chewed up and spit out by Google, you should give it a try you might have better luck

It's paywalled. I'm not interested.

Perhaps I'm a fool, but I don't want to be part of that kind of internet. Most of my blogs have no ads. There are no paywalls. There is no subscription.

I am trying to monetize it with Patreon and tips because I want that information to be freely available, but I have bills to pay. I gotta eat and I'm frequently broke.

I'm flat broke right now. That's an all too common occurrence.

So I'm pretty fed up with hearing people decry the evils of ads on the internet, decry paywalls and on and on because the same crowd that does all that turns around and tells me "Get a real job. Writing doesn't pay." and sees zero connection between their desire for free writing and my intractable poverty.

Meanwhile, local papers are going out of business left and right and it's a threat to political freedom.

I do everything I can to be an independent voice on various topics and people who bitch and moan endlessly about the loss of such do nothing but kick me in the teeth and tell me to stop whining about my problems.

If you want independent voices, support their Patreon. Give them tips. Don't kick the shit of them for posting their own stuff. Share their stuff.

Etc.

This is the world you are helping to create. You can be part of the solution or part of the problem. I have been desperately trying for years to be part of the solution and it isn't paying my bills, making me any friends, etc.

The evils of ads and the brokenness of pay walls are a lot more nuanced than that.

Ads have created an ecosystem where no one is willing to pay for media because we have gotten it free in exchange for our privacy. This hurts you, small publications, large publications. No one wants to pay for shit and we are tracked everywhere we go.

Paywalls are broken because of the credit card system. Publishers can not charge a reasonable rate for an article. Due to minimums, our financial system really only makes sense to have subscriptions. I do not want to pay $5 per month recurring. I want to pay 25 cents per article. That is not possible though. Pop up a pay wall for 25 cents and I will pay it. Good luck having that make sense with Stripe fees though.

I try to monetize my work with Patreon as well. It is difficult work. Fuck ads though. That's not the world I want. I have other income though.

The picture is certainly a lot more complicated than I have covered here. I get tired of repeating the same points, but it boils down this:

1. The current status quo is that there are no acceptable ways for me to monetize my writing: People hate ads and use ad blockers, people hate Patreon, people hate tips, people hate it if you are using your writing to sell other products (aka "content marketing") etc ad nauseum. There is no means to monetize writing that doesn't get hated on, so people de facto expect writers to work for free.

2. I'm tired of trying to analyze it to death and prove my point. I'm more focused on "Where do we go from here?" and less focused on "How did we get here and why is this so messed up?" If you hate it, help me find a path forward and forge a new model we can spread.

I increasingly try to focus on "If you hate the status quo, do something about it and vote with your wallet instead of bitching on the internet and then acting like this is inevitable and we can't change it."

Medium is garbage.