With all due respect, for someone who writes so often about research, you don't seem to have done your due dilligence on this one: You don't need to be a Medium subscriber to publish. Not even to be paid. (How do I know? I was unsubscribed for 6 months and still got my 40 cents a month or so.) So the large base of subscribers is paying for reading the drivel we write, not to publish their own.

I regard this site not as a side hustle (I don't need one, nor do I have time for one) but as a place where I can reach some people interested in what I have to say. The fact that I occasionally get a coffee paid by an article I occasionally spend 4-6 hours writing because I feel like it, is basically just a bonus.

I assume anyone who says they are making a living off writing here is either lying, or is spending a lot of time promoting themselves on other channels, something that I am really bad at. Oh yeah, that's one aspect too: Medium brings their own audience, which is nice if you don't have your own, e.g. if you hate advertising for yourself, like I do. So, your mileage may vary. If you advertise for yourself, you might be better off on substack or with your own website. If you don't, you benefit from access to a paying audience you didn't have to build.

Actually, I have the benefit of having been on the platform for a long time. I am not sure if with the changes to the subscriber rules I would still be able to publish paid articles at all, TBH.

Hm, might be worth an experiment.