Thought provoking and I agree that Medium's algorithms seem to be slanted at rewarding the popular writers. I am thinking of writing an article titled "I wrote all this stuff and only got a lousy $20". The amount of reward doesn't seem to reflect the amount of effort needed to write good articles.

It might be fairer if the distribution was fairer. I see from the applause stats that popular articles can get over 1.5k likes. That means that there is well over 1.5k members on medium, probably double that. So it is strange that my articles rarely get more than 100 views. Are all the members getting the chance to see my articles or not. The percentages suggest not.

As for Jessica and Umair, I do like their writing but I have become selective about reading them just for the reasons you say. I don't need to read yet another explanation of why Brexit screwed up the UK. I understand that if these writers are making a living off their postings then there is the pressure to keep writing day after day. But it is difficult to keep coming up with fresh ideas and content on a daily basis. I only manage about one article a week and even that is slowing down.

So it is difficult to keep writing stuff, with witty or click bait titles, day after day and expect the quality to be maintained. It is far easier to keep regurgitating the same subjects and arguments, rehashed into new articles. What concerns me is how few other writers appear in my feed. Perhaps Medium should look at their algorithms and provide a more balanced contribution to readers inboxes. Is their selection biased towards the most popular writers, to the detriment of less prolific contributors.