Ads don't apply to Medium. It's a subscription model. In theory it's a refreshing take as they rightfully recognize the many (ethical) issues with running ads,

Ads don't apply to Medium. It's a subscription model. In theory it's a refreshing take as they rightfully recognize the many (ethical) issues with running ads, surveillance tech, and so on. If for a moment we would assume a very large group of qualitative "citizen journalists" regularly writing, together they'd produce a vast sea of high quality content. Medium at one point also onboarded actual pro publications, so you'd get a really great set of content that in volume would be the equivalent of several thousands of newspaper and in terms of quality be close, whilst being more diverse. 5$ per month for that pile of quality is a steal. But for that to work, the quality has to be discoverable. You need to able to look at the homepage, and see top notch writing in the categories you're interested in. It would be a single place to do most of one's deeper reading, with seemingly no end. For very low costs. None of that has worked out, for the reasons I mentioned.