I believe once you start well and interact with the platform, Medium gives you a chance and then, you become really visible and get mostly boosted, but if you somehow aren't liked for some reason, the platform even forgets about you as if you are blacklisted. I used to get boosted mostly for all my first 50 stories, and the same way with the biggest publication, The Startup, used to publish all my stories almost without exception. Both of them didn't accept me anymore, once I started my own publication and I also stopped writing for a while. So, I was somewhat cursed. The lesson here I think is that keep doing what you are doing consistently and publish in the biggest publications and don't start your own publication. I now write just because I like it and I see it as a part of my life, not expecting much.