Great comments, thank you. I agree that Medium is far better than other Web sites in actually having substantive content and discussion. But as you say, there is still the human factor, and humans tend to be lazy thinkers and too easily fall into petty and snarky arguments.

Authors do try to maximize views, and I do too. The point of writings something is to communicate the content of your article, and if no one sees it, it defeats the purpose. Authors should have enough integrity not to rely on tricks and deceit to get readers.

Is it wrong to want to make money from writing? I don't think so. Authors are laborers and every laborer deserves compensation for their honest labor. But if someone is writing Medium articles ONLY for money, well, that's suspect. I don't see any problem with combining communicating one's ideas and making money from it. As long as the writing is honest and with integrity.

I agree with your comments about the Internet. I am curious what you think of this that I wrote: https://medium.com/institute-for-ethics-and-emerging-technologies/twitter-tiktok-and-siloization-607c3e9d5039