The thing that builds platform or publication loyalty isn’t great content or features. It’s community.

I know if I feel welcomed or accepted in a space, whether online or in the real world, I’m more likely to stick around. It’s a big reason why I continue editing The Political Prism here on Medium.

I certainly don’t do it for the money or the glory because there’s relatively little of both. At least for now!

I also don’t do it purely for my love of writing, reading, and helping people improve their craft. I enjoy all of those things, don’t get me wrong, but what keeps me coming back is more fundamental.

It’s the regular names that continuously pop up in my inbox. The people I usually see in the comments. The fresh takes I get to consume from writers I’ve grown to respect over years of editing their work.

That’s what keeps me here.

Medium seems to be doubling down on this community feature of their platform with their notes app, TK. I honestly wasn’t sure how to think about TK when I first heard its pitch. It sounded vaguely similar to [insert your favorite LLM].

How was this going to help my writing when I could just copy and paste this work into Claude or ChatGPT and immediately get pretty solid editorial advice?

But over the past few days I’ve played around with TK and the more I do, the more excited I get. There are two main reasons why.

TK helps you write without writing for you

Yes, it’s an AI assistant not terribly dissimilar from the million other AI assistants out there, but with one main difference — it doesn’t constantly beg you to use its AI features. It’s not trying to write for you. It’s trying to help inspire you to write.

It gives prompts. It gives structure. And most importantly, it gives you a quieter place to think about ideas that might be swimming in your brain, waiting to be articulated in words and maybe even shared with the masses.

This is in stark contrast to my recent adventures with Muse, Meta’s new LLM competitor to Claude and ChatGPT. That little labubu at Muse keeps trying to talk to me and encourage me to engage with it even when I’m not logged in!

So it’s refreshing to have an application that’s a little more chill, a little more come as you are. Put your legs up and stay for a while. “Have a think”, as my British friends would say.

Most importantly, join The Political Prism community

By far the most exciting part of TK — for me as an editor, at least — is the library feature. I just started experimenting with this and created The Political Prism library.

You can join it here.

We’ve got some basic rules like don’t engage in bad faith. Just don’t be a jerk. But otherwise this library is meant to supercharge our Prism community. You can share ideas, what you’re writing, what you’re reading, or just anything you’re thinking about (so long as it’s related to politics, society, the world, etc.).

At first glance, this seems to be a fantastic central repository and space for our writers, readers, and community members to meet and engage. I admittedly have only experimented with it for a few days, so time will tell, but I’m optimistic.

Which is saying something given the mood around much of the world right now.

I plan to post a weekly prompt about topics I’m prioritizing in the publication. We’ll also highlight some of the publication’s best recent work. And I plan to share current ideas and thoughts I have, including what I’m reading.

Basically, everything that has historically been documented in update stories like this one. But instead of writing entire articles, I’ll post to our TK library (and fine, maybe here too still on occasion).

Here’s to continuing to build the best community on Medium and the internet

When I created The Political Prism publication a couple years ago, I did it with the goal of celebrating diverse perspectives across the political spectrum. It was built on the premise that the more we engage with people we may disagree with, the more we can heal our divisions and build more empathy, understanding, and truth.

I still believe this is possible.

The more I have engaged with thinking that counters my own, the better I’ve become at thinking more clearly, strengthening my own principles and beliefs, and developing counter-arguments to what I’m against.

It’s possible to do all of this in a civil manner. In a constructive way. In a way that inspires others to think critically.

I hope to do all of this and more not only inside The Political Prism publication, but also at our new community library on TK.

I hope you’ll join us.

Here’s the invite link to join The Political Prism library on TK.

The Political Prism is on TK was originally published in The Political Prism on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.