Hey B, cheers for the shout out! I have yet to experience my pieces being outright removed or blocked, but there has definitely been some serious "shadow-banning" going on.

Any time I use the tag Covid or write about the pandemic, my views tend to take a nose-dive for a few weeks afterwards. I'd say the algorithm picks up on certain topics deemed controversial and simply relegates them to the backwaters of the platform. That way they can deny any accusations of censorship.

In fairness, Medium is still a lot more open than other media sites like Youtube in terms of the scope of the content they will allow to be exhibited, but a feeling myself and many other writers share is that this leniency is temporary and is not going to last long.

It's really only a matter of time, few months or a year, before they Error 410 a great number of those they flag as "conspiracy theorists" or whatever, and new laws in the EU, US and much of the Western world around misinformation and internet censorship will guarantee that this trend accelerates. In the very near future, their hands will literally be tied - they'll have no choice but to remove certain content.

Anyone serious about their writing career thus needs to begin moving their primary platform elsewhere, and that's exactly what I'm doing!