Medium has become a popular place for people who don’t run their own websites to post long essays and scathing exposes, in addition to producing some original journalism, all in an elegant interface that lends itself to longform reading.

But a new experimental “Save to Medium” feature discovered by app sleuth Jane Manchun Wong suggests Medium has bigger aims — it might like to be the place you read all those lengthy web-based stories you don’t have time to read right away.

Medium is working on “Save to Medium”



This could turn Medium into a reader app



I wrote about my thoughts and security analysis: https://t.co/yZNLsthPsD pic.twitter.com/doNwpLplcB — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) September 5, 2019

The unreleased “Save to Medium” feature looks like a clear competitor to Pocket and Instapaper’s popular read-it-later services, allowing you to quickly bookmark stories that you can then consume in its own interface whenever you like.

But unlike Pocket, the current experimental version of “Save to Medium” is getting some flak for doing something a little bit controversial: it’s scraping off the paywalls that publishers like The New York Times use to actually fund their journalism, according to Wong.

However, it appears that Medium creates a copy of webpages on their own platform without the paywall or ads



Not sure how publishers and news publications will think about this



I wrote about my opinions and suggestions on this unreleased feature: https://t.co/yZNLsthPsD pic.twitter.com/qhhRjlBi7P — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) September 5, 2019

That’s just how the test works, though: Medium tells The Verge that any final version of a product like this wouldn’t do such a thing.

Which is probably a good idea, considering how Medium charges a $5 monthly fee to get through its very own paywall, one it would presumably like to keep on getting paid. It’s quite possible it plans to implement a feature like Pocket where you can log into the sites that you pay for — assuming it turns “Save to Medium” into a real product at all.

In the meanwhile, there’s an easy CEO-approved way to bypass Medium’s paywall: just follow a Twitter link to get there.

All @Medium paywalled stories are now free and unmetered when you’re coming from Twitter. — Ev (@ev) February 27, 2019

Correction, 11:11PM ET: Pocket (and Instapaper) also remove ads. Earlier, we added Medium’s comment that any final version of a feature like this would not skirt paywalls.