To earn my approval to be on my follow list, a contributor has to do one of these three things:

1) Write FANTASTIC articles, worthy of winning Hemmingway awards.

2) Engage with me with intelligent discourse. Show me that you can look beyond your own vision.

3) Say something positive about the TDG!

Most of my follows come from #2.

I have about 320 followers. But after four years of being on Medium, I suspect many of them are no longer active.

In my version of utopia, my feed should consist mostly of my follows. Maybe 10% of my feed comes from here. Most articles come from strangers.

And I still get top writers I no longer subscribe to or click on my feed. Medium is giving them an advantage to stay popular.