A Medium Mystery: The Case of the Missing Followed Writers

An Archeological Dig Through My Following List Turns Up Surprising Results

Photo by on

Something had changed about Medium.

I noticed it around the beginning of August. The articles I was being shown in my Following feed didn’t seem that interesting anymore. It took a while to find posts I wanted to read.

Was it me? Was I becoming desensitized to enticing titles that nothing seemed worth the click anymore?

Then it dawned on me.

I wasn’t seeing certain writers I was following that used to post regularly. Yes, something was definitely amiss in my Following feed.

The clues:

• No posts from favorite followed writers
• Posts by people I never heard of before
• An overwhelming number of articles by publications
• Some recent posts by followed authors found in the For You feed

Witnesses reported that Medium made revisions to the Following feed. They no longer made the Following feed algo driven based on our reading history. It was changed to reverse-chronological order.