What was clearER is that curation isn't gone; it's de-emphasized and even less important than before. I think it was only ever critical for those in the MPP with free memberships.

What's clear (to me) is that Medium is trying to find ways to make the reader-writer relationship more central. And that they oopsed when they took writer names (bylines) off the displayed metadata on the home page.

But self-promotion remains the best way to bring in readers.

The other thing that's clear to me from all that is that they're NOT DONE YET. So whatever changes we see today, love 'em or hate 'em, are not written in stone yet.