I agree that Medium’s recommendation system seems to be poor. The main reason I subscribe is because I’m a software developer and Medium has become the go to place for long form how-to tech articles for using a specific language or technology. The other is Stack Overflow but that is more of a question and answer based format.
I have to agree all the personal development and politics articles tend to be really repetitive and even when I have found a writer I like I find myself having to unfollow them after a few weeks because pretty much every article they write is a rehash of the same theme.