I don't think these difficulties of Medium can be generalized to the wider industry. The CEO/founder Evan Williams is a billionaire who set out to create a good

I don't think these difficulties of Medium can be generalized to the wider industry. The CEO/founder Evan Williams is a billionaire who set out to create a good publishing platform for everyday Joes and Sues with little to no focus on monetization (as far as I can tell). Other text content based sites are more willing to sacrifice UX for higher ad revenue.