Annie, if you want to find things written by the people you follow you have to click on the New From Your Network header on the right side of the page. This takes you to a page where you have the option of All, People or Publications. Click on People and this will give you a feed of recently published stories by the people you follow — although not necessarily ALL the people you follow. I’ve discovered recently that several stories by people I follow never appeared in the People feed, so it is not everyone you follow but rather almost everyone you follow.
By the way, the All option is a complete joke and a lie. It does not contain ALL of anything. It’s not even a true feed because it stops after you scroll down just a little bit. I’m guessing the few stories in this page are those selected by the algorithm from people and publications you follow but it is not all inclusive so using the word, ‘All.’ as a title for this page is a flagrant misnomer.
Whenever I come to Medium I go first to the People feed in New From Your Network so that I can see what’s new from the people I follow. I rarely see their posts on the homepage feed. The homepage feed is a joke. Nothing appears on that page except what gets curated or picked by the wonky algorithm. It’s not about what you want to read but rather about what Medium wants you to read. And stories and articles labeled Based On Your Reading History are one of the biggest jokes. Very rarely do stories with that label have anything to do with my reading history or my interests.
In the almost 4 years I’ve been on Medium the algorithm has always been one of the biggest problems. Medium tweaks it constantly. One tweak will make it slightly better then the next tweak makes it worse, back and forth. They just can’t seem to get it right. It has never fully served the reader and what the reader wants. It’s all about what Medium wants us to read.
As for all the sex I’ve noticed that sort of comes and goes. But it’s not strictly the algorithm’s fault. That is what so many, many people write about and what so many, many people read about (plus the young curating staff seems to really like it, too).
Medium doesn’t make it easy for you to find what you want. You’ve got to go looking for it.
