Elizabeth, first thanks for the response. The point I would make is that there are many stories I would like to read that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend. Facebook has a similar problem with “likes.” You want to know someone died but you don’t “like” it. Also, recommends are public and there are a host of reasons people don’t want to indicate that. The second point, and I think this is crucial, is Medium is definitely not the place I go to find articles about topics I am interested in. I go to Medium to discover things I don’t know I am interested in, above all those incredible personal essays from people I don’t know.

**Published by Ted Merz Mar 9, 2016**