"But Medium keeps tinkering with reads, distribution and so on, to tweak their bottom line first but selling all of this as a great plan for writers."

Exactly. We're expected to do all of the work and get none of the reward. Write. Write well. Write legally as in source, references, etc. Promote on all of your social media. Cross reference all of your sites with this one. One and on it goes.

One thing I do recall Ev saying when he was trying to launch book writing on the platform was a comment to my comment. I told him I don't have time to write and market. Ev said

You write. We'll take care of the rest.

When exactly is that going to happen? Two years ago I published +/- 400 times in 365 days. Now I write when I feel like which is hardly ever. I blog on my YT channel. I blog on BuyMeACoffee. I pitch articles to the Huffing Post. Whatever is actually going to pay me to write. I've made more in tips on BuyMe in the last 30 days than I have in 6 months on Medium.

Now tell me that's not crazy!

Medium is going to continue to lose established well spoken writers tinkering with what THEY think is important vs listening to their writers and aiming for what is important to us. Yes, Medium is a writing platform but it is also a reading platform and if we all get sick of this and stop writing the only thing the paying readers will have access to will be 884129851269 articles from a certain region begging for followers. Period.

I think I'm done now! 😂