The way I look at Medium is as a very low-cost hosting service.

My first article here in 2018 earned me $650. It continues to be read, but I only get about 1 cent per read now. That article was 'selected for distribution' and I became a 'top writer' in Science. I had many other articles distributed in the years after that, but nothing I have published since they started algorithmically selecting articles, rather than have human editors select good articles, has been 'distributed'. So yeah, it's a cheap hosting service now -- much less work than having my own website. I recommend it!