While your main point is one that I endorse, I would like to point out that sometimes the read statistics aren’t perfect. Some people are fast readers, and their reads don’t always register in the stats.

I know this is true, because I have situations where I publish a story and someone will contact me to discuss it. I can tell they’ve read, even though the story stats tell me they haven’t, because they’re engaging with me very particularly about some of my thoughts.

I didn’t know what Medium’s threshold is to count a read, but if somebody needs, say, only 3 minutes to read a theoretically 8-minute story, I think that read doesn’t get counted.