I'm still in Medium jail for throwing shade at the general direction of their management in the last year or so. The platform has changed significantly since the glory days of 'elevation'. Medium publications and their professional journalist teams now occupy the cushy jobs - whilst everyone else is subject to the high levels of plagarism you've outlined. Medium has shifted away from promoting high quality amateur writing towards an online newspaper with attached social media bun fight.

I rarely write much on here anymore, and nothing much I write gets many views. Not a complaint, but an observation. If someone with 1.6K followers can't get more than 30 reads on a piece that's reasonably well written but isn't in step with the issue du jour, what the hell does the algorithm do for anyone?

Medium will become a victim of its own lack of successful strategy soon enough and haemorrage both writers and readers. See Julia's comment as an example. What was great about Medium a few years ago is being lost in a quagmire of plagarism, identity politics (low intellect high clap rate) puff pieces and a small cadre of nepotism in the upper circles. The same names, the same articles, the same problems repeated ad nauseum. They'll need to pivot at some point, but it needs to be sooner rather than later.

I'll be throwing some stuff into Recycled soon! It's been too long to not plagarise some of my own work. Hope life is treating you well and keep up the good work.