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Untrickled by Michelle Teheux's avatar

Thanks for including me, Kristina.

I do wonder what the justification is for Medium paying out Boosted stories at higher rates. I have lots of examples of stories that got similar rates of engagement but the unBoosted one makes twenty bucks and other Boosted one makes several hundred dollars. All of us who take our writing seriously have probably experienced the deep disappointment of putting significant work into a piece we believe deserves a Boost and gets decent engagement but makes very little money. (Hello "How About A Nice Facial With That Uterine Biopsy?" https://medium.com/the-narrative-arc/how-about-a-nice-facial-with-that-uterine-biopsy-038df49a7bad!) What's everybody's opinion on this? My opinion is that if a story resonates enough with readers to gain tons of organic engagement, it doesn't really need the extra payout -- but it does deserve a fair payment. I'd like to see Boosts used just to show the story to more people. Think about it: Writers would get paid for their ability to interest readers, period. And Medium would have the ability to show what they perceive as the best stories to wider audiences, thus (theoretically) resulting in members seeing higher-quality work. There's a conflict over whether human judgment or algorithms are the best at determining distribution of content on any given platform. Humans are biased and can have poor motivations, but algorithms have a tendency to send conspiracy theories and other problematic content viral. If humans bestow Boosts based on what they believe to be high quality, but payments are based on what readers engage with, readers get at least a little of the best of both worlds. Opinions?

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Lisa Beth Wright's avatar

My finger has been hovering over the "cancel membership" button on Medium all month. This may make the decision easier. If I can't get read, there is little point in staying there. Especially when I can't see the people I follow, either. And no, I'm not upgrading to FOM. Nope.

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