Hi William - I appreciate you sharing your concerns. This is something that we've discussed internally at Medium a great deal. We don't see ourselves as wanting to make everyone "comfortable", and we have and will continue to boost some very uncomfortable stories—and yes, this does come up often related to Black history.

I want writers to be aware of the context of Boost—how this surfaces stories in reader feeds, apps, etc.—so they can be aware of handling this type of content more skillfully, in ways that won't prevent them from getting boosted.

Your article on Carolyn Bryant outliving Emmett Till—which was Boosted—is an excellent example, and was one of the stories that came up in one of those discussions. That article includes an extremely disturbing image—an image that is relevant and important to the story in context. A less skillful writer might have used that as the cover image of the story, thinking that the shock value would give them more clicks. But you handled it with a sense of craft. Though still shocking, the reader had context for the photo through the writing the preceded it. That's all we're asking here: have some respect for the reader (and the subject matter at hand).