I feel similar to you. Although I understand the logic of wanting to maximize the ability to get content out in front of paying readers, re-publishing content strictly to game the system does feel spammy. Like you, there are some writers I have all but stopped reading because of the amount of recycling they seem to do with their content.

I write poetry. Not expecting to make any money from it to begin with is a fairly liberating feeling. LOL. Getting curated in poetry, as far as I can tell, doesn’t do a whole lot for boosting readership, so it’s not something I overly worry about. I do use Medium to workshop, so I have posted clearly marked drafts of the same poem at the same time. What I’ll do going forward is have the drafts all be contained in the same story with the most recent draft up front.