Here's the link to the announcement I mentioned: https://blog.medium.com/new-partner-program-incentives-focus-on-high-quality-human-writing-7335f8557f6e

The classic signs of a site in decline:

Massive staff layoffs. I believe it was last year that Medium laid off most of its staff.

Installing gatekeepers to make getting published next to impossible. The Boost program is a classic. You have to kiss the asses of the editors who are doing the boosting to get published. To make it easier to kiss up, Medium published an article introducing the booster so you know who kiss up to:https://blog.medium.com/meet-60-publishers-in-the-boost-nomination-pilot-bb4923442864

Throttle traffic. Fewer readers means less income to writers. Except Medium has forgotten to adjust a few data points. For instance, in September, my traffic continued to be poor but I somehow picked up 400 new followers. How is that possible? 400 new readers but my traffic didn’t rise? Same thing in October, to date, same lousy traffic, and 300 new followers. That’s almost a thousand new readers but my traffic and earnings supposedly are still in the toilet. Someone is cooking the books!

And finally, cut writers’ pay. Most sites will make up bogus excuses why payouts are so low. Medium has just been lying about it. Coach Tony is gaslighting us, claiming that payouts are the same, but I’ve been writing here since 2020 and so I have a record of my traffic and payouts. Payout rates are abysmal compared to 2020.

I’ve been suggesting to people to backup all their writing and establish a presence on another site in anticipation of the day when you log on to Medium and get the dreaded error 404 – page not found. Because that’s how it happens. No warning. The sites just shut down.

Hope this has been helpful.