At the end of the day, we are stewards of the money our members give us and they have been very clear that major changes were required. I certainly understand that this can be a livelihood because I worked with an Indian author for a long time who quit her government job to become a full time writer on Medium. So given that change is required, what is the "heart full" way to do it? Well, for a year I've been saying that the bar is going to go up. It has to. And that's exactly what has happened. Distribution and incentives are all favoring the highest quality pieces.

I honestly don't think it was going to matter what Medium does. ChatGPT is going to eat a lot of the more content-mill or magazine-level articles for lunch and take all the money out of that ecosystem anyway. So for years the guidance I've given authors is to go big or go home. If you want to be a professional writer then either write toward a book contract or write toward a portfolio for some other profession (maybe even copywriter). But to just churn out content on Medium or anywhere else is a risky proposition.

And also, please never forget that Medium was built by writers who wrote just for the joy of writing and never got paid at all. We have to leave room for them as well.