IMO. FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium among many other wannabes do not reside on Main st. Rather they are in another cyberspace much larger than Main st. where ROI time is very much ramped up with less time to ramp.

I think some of the perps you refer to do know a bit about concepts like SEO, or also think Medium is just another numbers game. In a way, they may be right.

If writers inside Medium, forget about the ad-spammers for a bit, are playing follower + promo du jour games, if that were a real problem for Medium I think they would stop that behavior, rather quickly, if possible, based on the rules. However, if it’s not an immediate priority for the Medium application, then in a way it will continue until it is a real priority.

Remember all those wannabes in the first sentence, every online app ever, is numbers and data play, like eyeballs to dollars for conversion to any ROI, therefore if some writers believe or smell current policies are made to be broken, so be it, they will keep it up until Medium (or any other app, think FB for a deadly example) prioritizes it’s policies strictly. All these cyber world apps tend to follow the amount of data that can be cultivated model, that’s where their currency is at, data and more of it! Think like this, maybe an ROI halo effect can happen by looking the other way if Medium gets bigger numbers and possibly more revenue over time.