Here’s How We Get Rid of the Clap-And-Runners

And help us stay mentally sane and less addicted to notification-induced dopamine shots.

Medium wants to be a respectable social media platform that deprioritizes clickbait articles and promotes stories leaving the readers with insights and aha moments instead of polarization and anger.

I’m all for it, and since Medium doesn’t want clickbait articles, the next logical step is to ban engagement bait.

Typical engagement bait tactics include following thousands of writers or clapping for articles without reading them, only to appear in the author’s notifications in the hope of a read and follow back.

There’s a simple solution to solve the clap and runner issue, and I will reveal it right now because I know Coach Tony is busy:

Make claps anonymous

If writers don’t know who clapped, there’s no incentive for the clap spammers to clap because we won’t be able to visit their profiles since we won’t get any notification.

Unsurprisingly, clap-and-runners are clever and will change their strategy and become comment-and-runners.

• “Great job! It’s a real Smillew job.”
• “Amazing piece. Did Smillew coach you?”
• “Thank you for sharing your experience! I learned a lot. May you have as many readers as Smillew.”
• “You’re a genius. Your name must be Smillew.”

Simple solution to this new problem: make comments anonymous.

Of course, it’s anonymous for the user, but system-wise, it’s still connected to an account, and we keep the possibility of reporting comments against Medium rules.

But what about my current writer friends? I want to know when they clap and comment!

Simple solution: the friend list.

If you put someone on your list of friends, you’ll get a notification when they clap, comment, and even when they highlight if you’re a bit of a masochist.

BTW, I’d love to stop receiving notifications because someone highlighted the same sentence as I did six months ago in a long-forgotten article.

But how do you make new writer friends?

Hardcore solution: comments remain anonymous unless the commenter is on your friend list. It means you can’t discover new writers from your comment section. You have to discover them first from their stories, add them to your friend list, and then only you’ll see them in your comments.

Soft solution: comments are anonymous by default, but users can change the settings and make them as they are now.

Other solutions: my comment section is open (and public).

Conclusion

Medium’s push for higher-quality articles with its boost program should go hand in hand with a higher-quality user experience. It’s time to ban the manipulative tactics of traditional social media. We need fewer notifications, or at least the possibility to choose if and in which cases we want to see them.

For example, I would opt out of notifications when someone follows me. I’m sure many would do the same, and it would end the follow4follow antics.

Here’s a related article I published two years ago. If you read it, you’ll see my writing style has changed.

And, of course, you can also check my Top Hat Seminar on Substack where my writing voice is raw and primal.