Since Medium changed the homepage, I've been spending less time reading stories and more time scrolling with disinterest before simply closing the tab. Seeing writers' names, seeing subtitles consistently (for deeper context on what a piece is about), and even seeing the cover photos for every piece (since that also gives you a clue regarding the "tone" of a piece sometimes) all helped to lure me in. Now, with all of that info being hidden on some portion or another of the homepage, I just don't feel as engaged, and I leave.

I also saw your piece about hiding follower counts, btw, which strikes me as a similarly bad idea. If I like someone a lot, I'll follow them. If I'm on the fence but their follower count is high, I'm more likely to follow them too, since I take that number as a sign that they routinely put out good stuff.

I'm not even thrilled about the fact that the new profiles offer such a large blurb about any given article/essay, because it takes me much longer to scroll through that much real estate to get an overview of someone's body of work.

Basically, I'm just feeling less enthusiastic about Medium since the new changes started rolling out. I'm sure all these changes have their reasons, but... the user experience (both as a reader and, I fear, as a writer) seems to have downgraded.