In the letter SF got from medium, the part that bothered me said…

Additionally, you are recommending spam with no views

I can only think of 2 ways to click on spam with no views.
(1) Automation, which he says he wasn’t using, and I believe him — and
(2) To click stuff without reading it. Or even opening it. (ie no views)

If #2 is the case, isn’t that also inauthentic?

That’s not to say SF didn’t read some many articles, because I know he does. He’s a reading and commenting fiend, and I mean that in the best possible way. I suspect a case of good intention that meandered down the wrong road.

While I don’t think we should indiscriminately hit the green heart on things we haven’t read — I do think there’s a trend of reading all the way through, and just moseying on.

Read rates are one thing — but recommend rates are, as a rule, abysmally low. And that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Ironically, my post about those little green hearts went up the same day.
(The coin toss of publications. They go up when they go up)

If you’re interested…
https://bullshit.ist/heres-what-google-told-me-about-medium-stats-and-it-ain-t-pretty-cdbf53cff395#.1igifoisb