Heya, Love! So much to say here, because that elephant in the room is my coworker. 🐘 I think about this stuff all day every day, so get ready for a lot of thoughts...

My assumption is that of course publishers will nominate stories that align with their editorial opinions. That's a feature of this program; not a bug. We want strong editorial opinions being expressed through what gets nominated.

(As a reminder: nominations are just one way that stories get Boosted, and each nominated story goes through our curation team. If a nominator submits a biased story that does not meet Medium's Quality Guidelines, it does not get Boosted. Also, our curation team is reviewing and Boosting stories on their own, completely separate from nominators.)

Since part of this program is introducing a two-layer human community curation system to Medium, it's assumed that humans will do what humans do -- which is be opinionated, biased, self-promotional, show favoritism, etc. I say this not because anyone in the program is shady, but just because that's how humans work when it comes to content monetization programs! I've been on the internet for 30 years, so I know how this stuff goes.

I built up this program with the assumption that "humans will be humans, for better and for worse," and so a huge part of what I'm testing is how to structure the program to best work with that humanity.

One aspect of that is having multiple layers of curational checks and balances... but big part is being thoughtful in how I select the folks in the program.

This is why I've worked hard to try to have a broad range of topics, identities, and ideologies represented in the Boost Nomination Pilot program. Nominators include everyone from Gen Z BIPOC neurodivergent LGBTQ folks to retired academic boomers to middle aged professional journalists to religious vets who own assault rifles -- and everything in between. I have nominators from almost every continent, every age group, and as many topics as I can... and I add new folks weekly to try to get every more diversity of thought and perspective represented.

As for your concerns about politics, big huge YES do I ever hear you on that concern! I had a meeting last week with two nominators to talk about the perceptions of Medium as a liberal echo chamber, and how this program can be a part of creating an ever broader diversity of thoughtful discourse on the platform. As our curation manager likes to say, "'I agree with it', and 'I believe in it' are NOT factors in selecting stories for Boost."

Anyway, sorry: didn't mean to write a novel, but again: that elephant in the room is my work spouse.🐘 I'm excited to get to talk about them with folks who care as much as I do about this stuff!