You can open an article for no paywall on Medium, but they purposely make it difficult by requiring you to sign up for their partner program (and provide all yo

You can open an article for no paywall on Medium, but they purposely make it difficult by requiring you to sign up for their partner program (and provide all your taxpayer / payment information) to do so. So I think it's a split between people who want to try and generate some revenue, and those that don't want to sign up for that program and are too used to Medium to switch away.