The End of Clapping

What if Medium removed this feature and only kept the highlights and responses?

I published this story on Sunday evening, October 2nd. The next day when I looked at my stats, I noticed that it had generated $0.42 and some reading time without even receiving any claps. There is nothing surprising in this as Medium has long focused on reading time to reward writers via the Partner Program. Only it awakened a sudden thought in me that I found quite exciting: What if the claps disappeared to give only room for highlights and responses?

I have always been one of those who applaud generously during concerts or live shows. What could be more natural than to clap one’s hands to express one’s admiration or joy when one or more artists offer us an unforgettable moment? Only here on Medium, things are a little different. We are all artists who deserve to be applauded, no doubt about it. But the more time goes by, the more I find that the clap feature has become a vulgar dopamine generator that doesn’t really make sense anymore.

Medium has always wanted to do things differently from other social networks, at least during Ev Williams’ reign. But I can’t help feeling that the claps feature is not going in that direction and is too much like Facebook likes or Instagram hearts, to name a few.

After each of our readings, we mechanically press the hand buttons (for me almost always until I reach 50 claps) to let the writer know that we loved their story. Sometimes, and even often for some, we stop at this digital flower throw without taking the time to write a real human response which in my opinion is much more valuable. We deliver the dopamine shot to the writer on a platter and then nothing more.

So today I’ve come to think that not being able to applaud a story would be great for all of us, whether we are in the reader’s or the writer’s shoes. As a reader, it would even be a time saver and allow us to concentrate more on our reading and what we will say to the writer without having this final step where we have to send the reward. As a writer, we wouldn’t have to worry about that sometimes stressful number that can make us think that our story hasn’t interested anyone.

Perhaps we would write more freely without chasing the prize for the most claps. I never did, but I put myself in everyone’s position. I feel like it would be liberating for everyone and the only thing we would have to deal with would be writing and reading. What could be more logical, since reading time seems to be the most important notion here?

Medium has already taken away the display of claps when you browse the home page. I think it should go a step further and make them disappear completely even on a story page. In order to leave only the button to write a response at first, and in a second time to display the total reading time. It’s just an idea, but it would give interesting information about the (relative) success of the story, and more importantly, something on which we couldn’t act directly, unlike the claps.

As for the highlights, I find them terribly useful and they are a good way to show the writer which part of his story particularly touched us. So they should remain alongside the responses. What would be crazy is if every time you highlight a passage, it is saved somewhere on Medium so you can easily find it and read it again. Like a sort of precious notebook that contains quotes from our favorite writers. In my memory, this was the case a long time ago. I liked it a lot.

I’d be curious to know what you think of all this.

Let’s discuss it in the responses!

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