Medium Wont Add Canonical Links Despite Broken Import Tool

Medium has to be one of the most disjointed platforms I’ve ever used.

Their import tool recently stopped working, inexplicably, simply throwing this error, with no further explanation:

Without the import tool, it’s impossible to set a canonical link back to the original source of the content (which should definitely be your own blog) — risking duplicate content SEO penalties etc…

I emailed support, who are notoriously awful. Eventually I got a reply, asking to email them the canonical link, and they’d add it for me:

I dutifully did that, and sure enough, the canonical link was added.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I’m trying to repeat the process — the import tool still broken, I posted my latest post on my own site (alexjamesbrown.com)
I then painstakingly copy-pasted it to Medium, and published.
As they confirmed in previous correspondence, I then emailed them to add the canonical link back to my blog:

However this time, I entered into a merry-go-round of incompetent support staff, stating “there was no way to do this” — despite them literally requesting me to do this!

I reminded them of what they previously asked me to do, but got another templated reply, at which point, I’ve resigned to the fact their support staff are utterly incompetent.

I won’t bother posting on medium any more.