> And so we lost the incentive for a lot of the best and most interesting authors to bother because they were getting swamped by content-mill type authors. As of December, about 30% of our recommendations are generated by a new system that is picking much higher quality articles that have been vetted for substance over clickbait. This is getting a lot better, rapidly.
Deboosting those content-mill authors is a good step! However changing the recommendation system is not enough. With Google, everyone interacts with it through the search box so them changing the search results is enough to influence what SEO junk is on the front page. But with Medium, anyone can promote their junk articles on Reddit and on other platforms and it will still result in a click and a paywall, which contributes to people avoiding medium.com links. You need to stop incentivizing these content-mill authors altogether (or prominently blackmark these posts/blogs so everyone knows to avoid them).
Deboosting those content-mill authors is a good step! However changing the recommendation system is not enough. With Google, everyone interacts with it through the search box so them changing the search results is enough to influence what SEO junk is on the front page. But with Medium, anyone can promote their junk articles on Reddit and on other platforms and it will still result in a click and a paywall, which contributes to people avoiding medium.com links. You need to stop incentivizing these content-mill authors altogether (or prominently blackmark these posts/blogs so everyone knows to avoid them).