Yes to everything you said. I'll supplement with this question that a friend texted me the other day: "Just curious. How is it that Medium has a rule about title case, publications enforce the rules heavily, yet several staff picks and even one of their posts don't have title case?" I replied, "I can't make sense out of nonsense."

Anyway, to your central point, yes, boosting should create more views which should hopefully lead to more engagement, and some bonus probably makes sense, but the bonus does seem so disproportionate as to penalize the 99% of stories that are not boosted.