I was going to only clap once to prove that I'm a real reader, but thought better of it.

The stats tell me that readers are reading my stuff, and a lot are external, so no wonder writers feel frustrated about no earnings, however providing earnings to the top writers for externals will made it worse for the average writer as this doesn't magically grow the earning pool.

Yeh, and too much behind-the-scenes magic is never a good look. Ultimately, it would be good to see Medium putting in some more dynamic effort to convert these externals into payers.