I'm not a content mill and don’t write click bait. I write long form scholarly articles on Russian history and the Russia-Ukraine war to combat Russian disinformation. I’ve also written a book length series of articles about mythologized WWII history in the Netherlands, Italy, the USA, Britain, Russia and Italy. One of my faux peacenik adversaries I exchange with regularly called me Medium’s favorite historian.

Your changes to the Partner Program just lowered my earnings from $1.60/reading hour to about $.20/reading hour. You can get away with this because Medium's writers will not form a WGA, like Hollywood's. Being a retired business school prof and angel investor in several startups, I don't particularly need my Medium earnings and don’t write for the money. The money is just the measure and symbolic representation of success or failure of what I write. Money is also the symbolic representation of Medium’s respect vs contempt for me as a writer.

By lowering the payment per reading hour by 75-80%, Medium shows me contempt, an incentive to move the content I create to Substack. If only 5% of my nearly 1000 followers acquired in three years of writing with zero promotion by me think it's worth subscribing to my content on Substack at 3 euros/month, I'll make a lot more than on Medium with more certainty of earnings. If 10% subscribe, I'll make 3–5x what I make on Medium. Do the math, sharpen your Partner Program pencil and revise the algo to restore the earnings lost if you don't want to lose a lot of writers, including this one. Humphrey Bogart once said that the real purpose of money is to be able to tell big shots where to go. At my age (68) and financial circumstances my tolerance for being shown contempt by anyone I do business with is a very simple number: zero.