Aloha Jennifer,

First and foremost - thank you for joining my Medium Follower Ohana. I'm delighted and honored.

Next? This post reminds me of some soul searching I encountered when I began my Medium journey in 2018. After six months I grew weary of Pontificates who deemed their wisdom supreme enough to lord it over all. I grew sad when I read misinformation served up as gospel.

The soul searching started when I learned of Medium's tools to:

• mute
• see less of
• block

authors. I struggled with using these tools on the off-chance I'd slowly create an echo chamber. While it's certainly annoying those times I get snared into yet another how-to savvy click-bait post highly featured in medium's algorithm. Is my annoyance the stick that pokes me into clicking on mute? Is my UG, wasted 5 minutes I'll never get back justification to see less of this sort of stuff?

Guess what. I resolved my struggle after reviewing an authors profile page. After witnessing dozens of posts with variations on a theme? Yup. Banned with no sense of guilt or worry.

Now? If medium's algorithm sprinkles an author into my feed with content I've banned numerous times - no worries. My ban list grows.

I wonder if medium's back-end ever tracks banned authors. What a service medium would provide if say after 1000 bans within two days - said authors posts are far removed from featured placement.

We share a similar outlook on why we're here. I post cause I enjoy writing. Can my writing improve. Of course. Is my writing worthy of someone's critique? All depends on what inspires the critique. Help me evolve? Rock on. Diss me? Next! LOL