It's distressing that Medium has chosen to dump on the folks who most need support. I'm sorry, but is the writing of folks with more followers "better" than others' writing? I doubt it. Many of the writers with huge followings write clickbait crap, to be blunt. This is the same thing Etsy has done: instead of promoting new shops or the work of artisans trying to develop a customer base, they favor the sellers who already have lots of customers, and who can afford to offer free shipping on everything. New sellers have almost zero chance of being featured, or even showing up in the first page of results. This is late-stage capitalism: give more and more to the haves, the hell with the have nots. Depressing.