Tactics are easy (get rid of the "For You" entirely, bring back the feed reader, get rid of all curation and boosting, etc) but Medium HQ's mindset and values have shifted from readers and grassroots writers to elitist curators and nominators.
Check out the comments on Umair's goodbye post. Readers are dead bored with Medium's new top-down approach:
"What’s going on with Medium?"
"I’m a bit bored by medium myself, the daily feed is full of stuff I have no desire to get into."
"I subscribed to Medium specifically to follow Umair Haque. I'll be very interested in this new publication."
"I signed up with Medium a few months ago just for you. Hardly read any other Medium stuff. So I have just under a year left on this platform."
"You are not alone in moving on from Medium."
"Both of my favourite writers are abandoning medium."
"Is Medium dead?"
My personal context:
I joined Medium many years ago - November 2017 - wrote and read a bit, then got bored and left... but never turned off the daily email. Then a few years ago, the algorithm got so good that I HAD to open the daily email, and HAD to become a paying member!
Then I started writing+publishing in earnest-- nearly 500 articles and over half a million words. Grew to 34,000+ followers, built a proper publication with 5,000+ followers, and was the #1 writer in half a dozen topics.
But it's been straight downhill since Jan 2023.
-Now my average article gets <500 views and makes pennies.
-I applied for the "Medium Author" badge a year ago, and re-applied, and still nothing.
-I regularly get comments and emails from readers asking why they never see my stuff anymore.
-And as a paying reader, I'm back to never opening Medium emails, or even reading recommended articles when I'm on the site. Medium is dull. It feels like a bunch of elite editors are trying to convince me to like their friends' boring articles, instead of an algorithm that knows exactly what I want to read.
So now I'm drifting back out the door like November 2017.
Ultimately, this is a human issue. Tony has zero respect for folks like Tim Denning, Umair, Jared A. Brock, etc... and therefore has no respect for the preferences of their readers... as this thread clearly proves.
