Considering The Situation .. Again
The State Of Vocal - September 2025
Introduction
These are some observations on the current state of Vocal, which is not good for creators and readers alike.
I know this piece will give me a lot of criticism from other creators for daring to point out that there are faults with Vocal, but I just want it to be working as, in my opinion, it is the finest online publishing platform, even though they don't appreciate my work.
This is one situation I had to deal with, but thankfully, others won't have to deal with.
So Where Are We Now?
The site is slow, and there are gateway timeouts requiring us to try again. If we use the editor, saves often don't work because we are auto timed out as we edit (you can correct this by logging in on another tab in your browser, but god knows what happens in the app)
In this story (which I can't embed), Raymond G. Taylor remarks that when this happens to readers, they don't wait or retry, and we lose reads. If we are paying for our subscription, Vocal should be offering some recompense for that.
Reads are my biggest income for Vocal now, as my stories are not deemed good enough for any bonuses by the moderators, so it does rankle a little with me.
The Worst Thing Is
Not a word from Vocal. This is what their status page is showing. Disruption last Friday, but everything has been fine since then:
Here is their launch article with a link to the Status Page
If things were wrong where I work, and I didn't let people know the situation, I would be severely reprimanded or worse.
Time and time again, Vocal just go quiet when something goes wrong.
We need to know what you are doing, even if you don't know what is wrong.
Are Vocal under a DOS attack? Are the servers failing? If you don't know, please tell us and let us know that you are trying to find a solution.
Conclusion
Vocal is the best publishing platform, but we need it working. We have your back, Vocal, let us know that you have ours.
About the Creator
Keep reading
More stories from Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred and writers in Writers and other communities.
Save It For Later
Introduction This is another short piece on how I create some of my stories. Believe it or not, there are some creators out there who are more prolific than me, and certainly more talented than I am, as I can only work with words.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 5 months ago in Writers
After the Storm
After the storm of winter snow there sat a small bear by the name Ted, of course. He loves the snow and likes to roll around in it making all sorts of trails and whatever he has a mind to do. He wondered where all the people are, but in a way, he is hoping that they are all snug in the homes maybe drinking hot chocolate-one of his favorite drinks with mini-marshmallows and eating something homemade for he likes this winter wonderland all to himself to romp and play and maybe even catch some fish down by the river.
By Mark Graham5 days ago in Fiction
Comments (16)
I've been getting logged out of the app a lot more than on my laptop. It's never impacted me while writing, but it's definitely a lot more than how things used to be.
I agree that they should communicate with us a little more, keep us involved. Back when we had regular interaction from Vocal mods I feel like it felt like a safe place to be heard. I worry about vocals platform right now. If Vocal is paying creators world wide, they could be trying to fight tariffs like so many media platforms are having to do. Try to keep positive, I am sure it will continue to get better!!
Wooohooooo congratulations on your Leaderboard placement! 🎉💖🎊🎉💖🎊
Hear hear, it needed saying.
Being so new to Vocal, I have only seen it working wonky like this. This isn't the usual, I take it? It sure would be nice if they got it working correctly or at least addressed the issues, especially with so many people paying for Plus. I agree with you!
I once suggested that a monthly face to face with the face of Vocal, just to feel that we are kept in the loop, they did one Zoom and gave up because not a lo of people tuned in. Would be nice to chat with them once per month or second month...maybe cost too much...who knows.
So true, but my biggest gripe right now is that YouTube used to be ad-free through Vocal, and now it's not. I use Vocal for my school performances so that I can play the backing tracks or intro pieces without ads, and I use it for some lessons. I'm not sure what to do now. Maybe I'll have to download everything, but that takes up lots of space. I'm not paying out of pocket for YouTube premium.
Well said, Mike. It has been a very frustrating week on Vocal. I think everyone accepts things sometimes wrong, but it would be nice to know if the problem has been identified and if they have a solution. If creators knew what was happening, it would make a big difference.
It seems to be a little better now but the verification thingy is still there. Yes, I agree that they should communicate what's wrong and what are they doing to solve it
I have been getting the "checking to see if I'm human" every time I log in for the past two weeks. Today, I created a haiku on my iPhone, and Vocal would not save it. Numerous times. I grabbed the error in a screenshot and opened a ticket. I then went to my MAC and logged in. I was finally able to submit the Haiku, "Stamp of Green," right after receiving an email acknowledging my ticket. A) don't know if errors are the same depending on the device one is using (mobile vs computer). B) I agree it should be working. C) I know they are working on it, however, it is quite frustrating D) I usually create my work in WORD and then paste it into Vocal so I won't lose it and have a backup for all my stories. E) Since we don't know what is happening behind the scenes, it would be nice if they gave us more detail, such as "we are conducting maintenance on the system (which they should be doing regularly anyway); "we have hardened our systems to stop x,y,z," etc. Not all system issues are caused by outside forces like hackers.
Unfortunately many issues are caused by those trying to break the system. Yes Vocal needs to keep up with protection and running the site. BUT let’s not forget those who are the real problem. They seem to get off because we cannot always name them or find out who they are. We are shifting our blame and that I do not agree on Am I frustrated at times, yes. Yet I remember what this platform has given us. Mike it is good to state our mind and point out true problems. However let’s also acknowledge who shares the blame.
There’s no denying that there’s something seriously wrong with Vocal and that they’re not communicating with us about it. I think that it’s because of them using Cloudflare that it’s at least gotten worse recently. They said in a comment on Raymond’s article that it was to combat AI traffic, but I don’t see how that is going to help if we can’t get human traffic through, either. (And as I wrote this, I took too long and encountered a problem. Of course.)
I noticed when I first joined in March there was a glitch for a while. It seems to have returned. 😫 I’ve been based on Medium & they used to have loads of spam/bots and glitches unfortunately; They’d leave a generic system message too, and at times we received a post. Hopefully Vocal will sort soon.
Once again a very good piece that echoes my own frustrations. I must write too long of comments because I often get errors and have to reload the page to get the comment to save. More than once, I've had to copy my entire story into a new tab. I understand that Vocal probably is doing a bunch behind the scenes we don't see, but like you said, it sure would be nice to get some transparency. It's great that you and Raymond are always willing to be the squeaky wheels on behalf of us all.
Yeah I've been trying to read stuff and Vocal has been having some issues loading things and when it comes to posting, it has been taking longer than usual too...
I agree! I was trying to read some pieces earlier and it just kept timing out, it's very frustrating when I want to show my support 😒