Hi Tony! First, thanks for taking the time to respond to this so quickly. I know I'm repeating myself now, but it really is incredible to have a CEO be so responsive and attentive to our concerns.

I hope you could see from my piece that I really do understand the reasoning behind this shift, and I don't doubt one bit that it's helped to spur new memberships. But what still confuses me is how this current policy leaves room for an article to go mega viral in the way that Julio's did when he inspired me to rejoin Medium a couple of years ago.

It seems to me that, even with the Friend Link, it isn't possible for a piece to achieve that kind of reach if the majority of people who open it still receive that paywall. I'm incredibly grateful that this Friend Link exists, because I feel that it leaves open the door to the possibility that a piece can truly reach masses.

It's a conundrum, though. As you say, if everyone did this, I can imagine it would have a crushing financial impact on the platform. But inversely, if some people don't do it, how can any Medium article reach an audience of millions?

Has there been any internal testing with the idea of allowing 1 or 2 free reads, instead of 3 or 0? I would imagine even just 1 free read might achieve a best of both worlds effect.

Once again, thanks so much for taking the time to respond here. I can't overstate how much positive I believe you're doing for the platform, and I really enjoyed your Medium day address. In my two and a half years on the platform, this free reads concern the significant gripe that I've had as far as policy changes go, and even then it really isn't an enormous gripe to have.