I agree it's off-putting and annoying. However you are missing an important point. Most writers who fall into this trap ate niave and likely new writers, who saw someone else do that and thought "oh that looks good". Of course it's not but rather than make people feel "strange" why not try understand how they fell down the rabbit hole. Surely that would get more reads if there was understanding of the niavity of people doing that. And what about the Facebook groups, read for read, just because that goes on "behind the scenes" makes it no better than asking someone to read your post for up to 30 minutes. It's exactly the same thing but because it's on facebook, more socially acceptable. I am having doubts myself now about the whole "pay to write" game. I just want to wrote in peace and hope I do good enough to get reads. When I started on medium in 2020, I just wrote 1 story, not even thinking about who would read, not marketing myself or having a membership and that story did the best in terms of reads. I did share the link with relevant others and they seem to like and appreciate it but didn't have to read their stories in return. I think it is better to let writers learn from their own mistakes rather than be critical of what they did wrong. They will soon pick up on their mistakes. I see many writers do this, finding fault with other writers and posting about it to get reads themselves. It's almost as bad as asking an audience to read for more than 30 seconds.