I'm not sure I buy that.

Ev has been building blogging platforms since the 1990s. I think his vision is pretty clear, and in a world of hypocrites, he's not at top of the list of people who spring to my mind.

What I do think is that maybe they're experimenting, still, trying to strike a balance that's beneficial to all and still profitable.

NO company runs a free and ad-free blogging or social media platform simply for the love of their users. They have to pay the staff and keep the lights on. They have computing (data center) costs.

From past experience elsewhere - as a user, moderator, content creator, project manager - I'd say that any "fault" for this sense that Medium (or any site - even Facebook, which I have a lot less sympathy for) lies as much with that small segment of abusive users who push the envelope to game the system for short-term profit (this includes the spammers, scammers, black hat SEO "experts," propagandists, and plagiarists). You can build something nice, but you have to harden it against abuses that are sometimes hard to anticipate.