Even a pub with good curation will publish a lot more than lonely writers. For instance, I don't think that most writers can publish more than 1 story per day, whereas even a selective publication with good curation will probably publish at least 5 stories per day.

So each week it's 7 stories from the prolific writer versus 35 stories from the low-volume publication.

So as long as one follows publications, they will ALWAYS dominate the following feed and drown out individual writers.

So as a reader who is a super fan of some writers, I have no choice but to unfollow ALL publications if I want to make sure I consistenly see my favorite writers in my follow feed.