I'm just in 'can't be bothered' mode with Medium these days. Sometimes I'll write some silly little thing if I feel the urge, just to scratch an itch. Or will write a proper piece if I feel so inclined and believe it has a decent chance of being boosted, since otherwise, why bother?

Medium works for me because of the simplicity, the idea that you just write stuff, and it handles all the rest.

We know that distribution and organic growth in fact function extremely poorly, hence the absolute reliability on the manual boost system.

If spam control also requires hours of effort - to fight a losing battle - it's very hard to see how the platform justifies its existence.

If I'm going to have to put that amount of work into building and maintaining a viable, paying audience, I'm better off on Substack, I think, which i have avoided because of all the user-side effort involved.

Medium works as an out-of-the-box, plug-and-play, WYSIWYG content editor and distributor. If it can't fulfil that function, I simply don't see the point to it. It's like the Flintstones' car.