Medium’s idea is that if you know how the Recommend button works, your Recommends will be influenced by that information, so it’s better to let you figure out how to use the Recommend button on your own.

That way, they believe that the Recommends you will give without knowing how the button works, will yield more genuine coverage of Stories.

But it doesn’t work that way. Knowing how the Recommend button works will allow people to use the button properly, greatly increasing Medium’s interesting-story hourly rate.