Hello Graham

Thank you for sharing your personal interpretation of the Medium policy. You make quite dramatic statements. But could you support them by referring to any Medium rule?

So let me share my observations. If a post violates the Medium policy, it is simply not distributed. No one sees it. There is no point in posting invisible content.

What makes Medium different from other sites? Elements of social networking. In contrast to what you are afraid of, Medium policy encourages both use and promotion of all the Medium features including claps and comments.

There are two discrete groups of users - authors and readers. Over 99% of the readers are non-authors, so the authors cannot earn from the colleagues.

Finally, I repeat that it is wrong for an author to have no original ideas and read. Reading is for readers. The only way the authors can support each other is with claps. And such a support is purely decorative.