Or not. Because if my total allocation to writers is capped at my $5/$15 (or the proportion remaining for the pot once Medium have deducted the amount required to cover running expenses+profit), a prolific $15 reader is giving each writer less per read than someone on the $5 tier who reads just one story a day. They're giving more than they would as a prolific $5 reader, yes. But their reads are not objectively more valuable than non-Friends.

At least that's how i understand it.

What I don't get is how Medium knows on day 1 of the month how many slices of bread it has to spread each member's butter on.

All in all, things are even more opaque now than they were. though seemingly better in raw earnings terms. I do seem to be following a downward slop this month, from a real high in the first couple of days. This would make sense if it's the effect of the cap - they are over-allocating at the start of the month, and running out as the days pass by.

But if this is the case, it would have a couple of negative impacts:

1) it discourages users from reading 'hmm, maybe I'll like this' stuff, because if they stick around for >30s and it ends up being meh, they are taking money away from the writers they love and know they want to reward, and

2) it encourages writers to splurge their work at the start of the month/billing cycle/calculations cycle to get juicy day 1 pay rates for their stories.

Neither seems to be in line with either common sense or stated policy as far as the Medium platform is concerned, so I trust they will be analysing (and correctly interpreting) numbers 'going forward', as I'm sure they will be saying in the virtual C-suite.

Gotta say one thing for Medium - they always give us plenty to talk about.