I agree and largely consistent with much of the comment I left Maria:

"WHY CAN'T WE KNOW HOW IT WORKS?"

Because it's none of our business as we don't pay for the privilege of writing and if we did know how it worked a) we would be coders working for companies writing them, not writers and b) if we were told how it makes decisions writers would still be complaining that it's not working for them or finding fault or writing annoying articles about how to make money that even writers get annoyed reading.

While I don't really know who says they just write for fun or even what that means, I don't know what wrong message you think is being sent to Medium. Medium doesn't really owe us anything. If you don't want to write for essentially free, if you don't find reward in thinking that if your efforts have helped a reader meaningfully or simply bright them joy, if you are experiencing net energy drain from writing here, then while I will miss you, you should stop or at least take a break. I took a long break last year and came back invigorated.

The only thing about Medium the company that really bothers me is them faking that they don't know why the subscriber emails are often not sent. It's on purpose but can never be proven without too much effort to be worth it.