Hi, Amy. My understanding is that by this you mean 'we look out for attempts to increase distribution of a story through inauthentically high engagement figures'.

But is the converse true? In other words, if this mass of TikTok users are just skimming the platform, clicking in and out of stories, and so artificially (but inadvertently) bringing down the overall member+non-member read ratio, would that be spotted? And does that low overall m+nm read ratio cause distribution of a piece to falter?

My suspicion is that it does, and that such behaviour, as it is not an active attempt to game the system, but a passive by-product of new and unexpected patterns of usage for which the algorithm was not designed, might not be identified and accounted for.

If you can come straight out and say 'non-member read ratio has zero influence on distribution patterns', then I'm barking up the wrong tree. But otherwise, many thousands of inauthentic, superficial TikTokky users viewing reams of stories at random without reading will be affecting both distribution, and consequently earnings.

And will also be killing off the distribution of boosted pieces that Medium has paid $45 for, which would seem unhelpful to all concerned.

Could you offer any insights?

Thanks.