META-MEDIUM | RECOMMENDATIONS
How to Get Less of the Crappiest Crap in Your Medium Feed
So the algorithm feeds you more of the high-quality, relevant content
Medium offers something for everyone.
But with a huge amount of new and old content published on the platform, it’s easy to find your feed cluttered with low-quality, irrelevant stories.
As it turns out, scrolling away doesn’t solve the problem.
So, if you wish to see less crap*, and more of the content you’re looking for, and just in case, have paid for, below are some simple steps.
*By ‘crap’ I mean anything that wastes your time, provides no value, and is a barrier between a reader and the stories they actually want to read.
For me, it’s verbose 100% AI-generated articles; uninformative, preachy, clickbaity, general stuff; and stories that don’t suit my interest.
Let’s begin!
How Medium’s Algorithm Works
Let’s briefly look at the basics of Medium’s algorithm.
Medium uses a few factors to determine what appears in your feed:
- Reading history: What you read influences what you see.
- Claps, comments and highlights: The articles you engage with.
Have you noticed Medium has recently started recommending stories that writers you engage with have engaged with?
Meaning, if a story on your feed has 👏 Tanya Agarwal clapped written above the title, you’re seeing it because you have engaged with my stories. It might also have to do with following the writer.
3. Followed topics: The topics you follow.
4. Following: The writers and publications you follow.
Basically, like most online platforms, your activity determines what you see.
How to Improve Your Medium Feed
Now, let’s look at what you can do to better your feed.
1. Refine Recommendations
The ‘better internet’ that it is, Medium has a whole section on their platform just so users can curate their feeds on their own!
i. On the top left of your Medium home page, click on the ‘+’ icon.
ii. Clicking on the ‘+’ icon takes to you the Refine recommendations page as shown in the image below. Here, you will find 4 tabs — Following, Reading history, Muted and Suggestions.
I. Following
This tab shows lists of all writers, publications and topics you are currently following.
You can periodically review what/who you follow and update it based on your changing interests.
Pro tip: Choose specific topics. Instead of broad topics like “Technology” or “Health”, go for more specific ones like “Artificial Intelligence” or “Mental Health”.
II. Reading history
Your reading history shows the stories you have spent at least 10 seconds on.
Clearing your reading history may be especially helpful after
- doomscrolling on Medium
- browsing random, clickbait content.
That way, Medium won’t think you like those types of stories and start serving you more of them.
III. Muted
If a certain writer or publication won’t stop appearing in your feed even after unfollowing or clearing your reading history, you can just mute them by clicking on the 3 dots icon below the article.
Click on Mute author or Mute publication from the options list.
You will see all muted authors and publications in the Muted tab.
IV. Suggestions
Based on your past and present activity, Medium shows you suggestions for writers and topics you might want to follow.
Here, you can discover new writers and topics.
Under Topics to follow in the same tab, you can click on the arrow at the top right to explore a wide range of topics.
You will be taken to an entire Explore topics page where you can click on a topic of your choice, choose to follow/unfollow it and read stories added to the topic.
2. Cut the Crap. Literally.
Click on the minus (-) icon when you come across story titles that are crappy to you. Simple!
You will get the notification below.
Personally, I cut all crap along the lines of:
Unlocking Resilience: Creativity for Increased Productivity.
Titles with grammar errors, clickbait and generic titles are a huge turn off for me. I know I’m never going to click on that stuff, so I just remove it to not get more of it. To be honest, it doesn’t work by removing a single article of the type, so try doing it often.
3. Engage Wisely
Your engagement on Medium significantly shapes your feed.
- Clap for quality: Use the clap feature to show appreciation for articles you like.
- Highlight key points: Highlighting not only helps you remember important points, but also indicates to Medium the kind of content you value.
- Follow quality writers and publications: Before hitting the follow button, read a few articles by the author or from the publication to gauge their quality and see if it clicks with you.
Basically, avoid engaging with what you think is the crappiest crap.
The platform will eventually give you less and less of it, and develop an understanding of what you want. (Unless it’s only the crap that everyone’s consuming and the algorithm must put it on your feed.)
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