Any attempt at greater sincerity and honesty by Medium would, however, already have been undermined by its sustained and self-proclaimed policy of concealment and secrecy.

If you constantly say in public 'this is secret', 'we can't tell you anything more about this', and if users see that there is constant under-the-hood fiddling with numbers, and if your senior figures come out with tardy, boorish pronouncements when trouble happens, usually blaming users at least in part, you have laid the foundations for anything you say to be deemed unreliable.

If you open up, the reaction will be 'Why now? This is just self-serving damage limitation. They're bullshitting to get themselves out of a hole'.

And for that, they have only themselves to blame.