You make many sad, pertinent points. Things have indeed changed for the worse.

I am one of those extraneous poets you mentioned. Poetry is always a hard sell to a small audience. But before the changes, Medium (itself) used to occasionally recognize me. Not anymore. Not any poets that I can find. We are now off their radar.

I have 5300 followers. My numbers (eyeballing now) average something like 150 views, 100 reads, 80 likes, and 10 comments. These can vary dramatically upwards, sometimes.

Notice the strange discrepancy between followers and viewers? About every 10 days, I add another 100 followers, but the views stay in the 100 to 300 range. Why do ever more people keep following but not viewing or reading? Seems unlikely to me. Smacks of some phony, manipulative techno-magic.

I am 65, not the chosen demographic, and I think (who knows?) that my readers are generally older than Millennials. I never used to notice that as much as I do now.

I write here for the audience, for the “one person” you mention. It was good, now it’s OK. I’ll hang around until it isn’t, or I’m asked to leave.

I don’t know what is going on inside the Medium company. I think it is still trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. Time will tell.

Good article. Thanks for writing it.