All of this reminds me of the digital stock photography bubble of about 15 years ago. There was a mad dash to load as many stock photos onto a handful of websites. They pretty much took everything back in those days. I upload pictures of puppies and sunsets and whatever I could take pictures of and made thousands of dollars but then it got harder and harder. They put barrier in place so that you had to have X pixel sized images. Then you had to upload five high quality images to qualify. It seemed no matter how much I uploaded there was some bias against me as other photographers seems to get all the hits. I just gave up after a while because the algorithm was clearly favoring the big hitters over the little guy. Then came the referral links and memberships and so on and so forth. One algorithm change wiped out 75% of my earning over night from them. I gave up. Medium feels just like that. I am surprised we haven't seen copycat websites trying to eat into their share yet. I hear lots of people that have been around 1+ years are quitting because it's not worth it anymore.