You're right that a lot of people latched on to this, but that's just the old growth hacker mindset that the way to get paid as a writer is to game the system. Somehow the people who are saying this completely missed that there are three multipliers that swamp any of these engagement bonuses. Those are the big ones: follower loyalty, boost, read rate. Anyone who is focused first on begging for claps has their priorities wrong and I think that will be more clear as people see their earnings.