Couldn't agree more. If you look at what's happening in the network tab of the developer tools, you'll see it's doing a lot more than providing just a static blog page.
Instead, every x seconds it executes another POST request with pretty much all the details they can gather (scroll from top, scrollable height, referrer etc.).
As soon as you start moving your cursor, the new requests start adding up very quickly, with lots of new params such as "experimentName: readers.experimentShareWidget" or "key: post.streamScrolled".
It really is collecting every single interaction with this page. As it's provided by Medium I'm sure it's part of their data collection program.
I wonder if those experimentName parameters are to do with serving different example images to different readers. Below, u/Anhkmorporkian mentions an image of sneakers, but I saw images of a woman and of the Golden Gate bridge. Did other readers see different?
Instead, every x seconds it executes another POST request with pretty much all the details they can gather (scroll from top, scrollable height, referrer etc.). As soon as you start moving your cursor, the new requests start adding up very quickly, with lots of new params such as "experimentName: readers.experimentShareWidget" or "key: post.streamScrolled".
It really is collecting every single interaction with this page. As it's provided by Medium I'm sure it's part of their data collection program.