Solid argument. At Corsair’s, we have a passion for feedback. While I think signal vs noise is a bit of an oversimplification, I do think you hit on a number of major issues with claps. For whatever flaws existed with “recommends”, “claps” have only complicated things, not improved them.

Worse still, one of Medium’s greatest assets is now at risk. Articles here don’t ‘expire’. Or said differently, Medium under-weights recency (purposefully). Changes to the feedback systems will artificially ‘expire’ articles, especially if claps is abandoned for attempt #3.

Anecdotally — I believe that the articles we published during the transition period are now biased against. They were converted to claps even though many fans still had only a single heart to select…