A lot of people believe this but it's not true. Referral payments have come out of a separate budget and don't eat into author payments at all.

The author reaction against this really suprised me. I wasn't CEO when it rolled out but I've seen a lot of discussion about it.

I was expecting the opposite reaction.

If Medium only pays for internal views, then each author is in competition for those views. It's a zero sum game and has led to a lot of dillution of earnings. Essentially, new authors eat into the earnings of existing authors. That's the fundamental reason author earnings have dropped.

Referrals and other forms of paying authors who grow the pie are really healthy for existing authors. They make more money and page views available for the authors who are here.