Thanks, Chloe! And I totally agree about the frustration of following people. I sorta wish Medium had a function where you could designate certain people you follow as VIPs (or something), and that there was a separate section in your homepage that showed you a (non-algorithmic) feed of all their articles.

Right now, I just have a literal list of folks whom I really like reading, and I make a point to check out their profile’s at least once a week to make sure I read all their stuff.