This is How the Medium Algorithm Changed in June
Writers' earnings dropped tremendously, this is the reason…
In case you’re still wondering, this is what happened in June on Medium.
This post makes a catchy headline “We paid writers more”! Great! Only it’s vs. last year, which is expected, as last year Medium didn’t have the Friend of Medium tier, which is expected to generate more earnings for writers.
I’m wondering how is it vs. last month, as this is the measure for the positive cashflows.
My guess: writers earn the same or less. This is mathematically logical, since there’s no other source of income than the membership fees and the major expenses are writer’s earnings.
How the algorithm changed
Going down in the comments section, we can see three “primary” changes:
“author incentives”: I can’t think of anything other than writers’ earnings. After all, if writers make less, Medium makes more.
“curation”: I read some boost nominators reported a much lower approval rate of nominated stories. I assume this curation also refers to the stories that go for general distribution and the Medium staff picks.
“recs”: that goes to the recommendations. Tony explained that made a very big shift in which writers were recommended for read.
Here’s where my curiosity peaked: Tony suggests there are writers who get recommended more, and others who get recommended less. But almost every writer I read reports less views, reads and earnings. So I’m wondering:
Who the heck are those writers? And how does this lead to more subscribers??
Then I went down in the comments of this thread.
And it hit me!
I rushed back to my recommendations. I checked 10+ stories of writers I don’t follow.
All of those recommended stories had no link to read for free at the beginning!
Regardless — a friend link, a link to an external blog, or a link to your Substack (as I do)! All of those stories had none! Logically, readers were prompted to pay to continue reading.
To be honest, enabling non-members to read for free is not working towards Medium’s profitability. And for writers, it’s best if Medium becomes profitable as soon as possible.
I believe this is the major change in the algorithm in June.
The reason I read so many writers have drops in earnings is because I only read Friends of Medium and almost all of them start their stories with a link to read for free.
I’m now going to test how my stories will perform without adding such a link in the beginning.
Just as a reminder, we also saw in June:
Some counterintuitive changes that serve fewer views and reads for writers.
Lots of writers getting their enrollment in the MPP revoked.
Suspended and deleted writers’ accounts.
All affected writers I know are active daily.
I can now clearly see how all this leads to cash positive. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t mean profits, so I expect even more changes in the same direction.
So this is how Medium’s algorithm changed in June.
Interesting analysis. Do you think Medium will introduce ads at some point?
This lines up with what a lot of outside data points show about Medium in 2024-2025: the payout pool is still 100% membership‑funded, but distribution is tilting toward fully paywalled, highly curated content, not broadly accessible posts with free‑read escape hatches. Independent earnings breakdowns over the last 18 months show big drops in effective RPM for average writers alongside a smaller group whose per‑read payouts rose after the Friend of Medium tier and curation/boost changes, which supports your point that profitability is being chased via stricter recs, tighter boosts, and less generosity toward non‑members rather than an across‑the‑board 'we paid writers more' approach.
What would be fascinating now is a simple A/B test on your side: 10 posts with the free‑read/external link high in the intro versus 10 where it’s removed, tracked for 30 days by member reads, non‑member reads, and earnings per 1k views... does the cash‑positive via no free link hypothesis show up in hard numbers for you too?