It looks like Terijo is right (which should surprise no one!)… The difference between the feed of a non-paying member and a paying member is pretty big. At a glance, they look the same. On the homepage, both have a “New from Your Network” section, and both have a “more” link. The difference is revealed when you click the “more” link. When signed into my non-paying fake account, clicking the “more” link brings up the page divided into All/People/Publications tabs just like for paying members. But there are only 6 stories visible under “All,” and 8 under “people.” When signed in as my real paying member self, both “All” and “People” scroll on endlessly, bringing up hundreds of stories. Most of those are in the “In Case You Missed It” section, so they’re older and I already read most of them, or at least the ones I’m ever going to read. BUT, for my non-paying fake account, there is no “In Case You Missed It” section. Intuitively, I would guess that if a non-paying member checks their “New from Your Network” feed frequently, they’d keep up pretty well. But the luxury of scrolling back through time and catching up on stories you skipped over a day or week ago looks to be a privilege of membership.
I’m going to follow a ton more people on my fake account this morning and see how that changes the feed. It also may change over time, as the Medium algorithm learns my fake preferences and tailors the feed to suit. I’ll report again in a couple of days on that.
