As an an academic and writer, I’m always on the lookout for new ideas and perspectives to fuel my creativity. That’s why I love scanning platforms like Medium for fresh content. It’s a great way to discover new writers and to learn about topics that are timely and relevant to current events.
One of the things I love about scanning platforms like Medium is the sheer volume of content available. There’s always something new to read, and I find that the more I read, the more inspired I become. I’ll often start by scrolling through my Medium feed, looking for articles that catch my eye. Sometimes I’ll find an article that speaks to me, and I’ll save it to read later. Other times, I’ll read an article and feel compelled to share it or respond with my own thoughts and ideas.
However, as much as I love Medium, there’s been a recent development that has made it difficult to find the latest stories. Medium used to have a “Latest” section on the topics pages, which allowed readers to sort stories by the most recent publication date. This was incredibly helpful for those of us who wanted to stay up to date with the latest content.
Except that I cannot do that anymore. Unfortunately, Medium removed the “Latest” section from the topics homepage, and it’s now much harder to find the most recent stories. Instead, Medium now sorts stories by popularity or whatever algorithm they have selected, with the stories appearing at the top of the page often years old.
This is a shame because popularity doesn’t necessarily equate to quality, and I’m not interested in an AI story from 3 years ago or a 2018 Biology post about protein structure prediction. These are outdated stories that aren’t worth highlighting anymore even if they were popular at the time. Perhaps, I’m missing something but I simply can’t figure out how to sort stories by publication date within specific topics. This feature is gone from both my iPad and MacBook Medium pages.
I understand that Medium is trying to promote popular content, but it’s important to also give readers the option to sort by publication date.
Please, Medium, bring back the “Latest” option.
Update
Thanks to Maliha for explained how to get to a Topic page that includes the option to sort the articles chronologically. This is great. But it requires several clicks and I beg Medium to bring back the Latest option to the Home page.
Acknowledgements
This post was written with assistance from ChatGPT.
