I don't subscribe to them, and I've switched off all email notifications.

What I meant by my comment is that followers should have everything one writes sent to their feeds. It isn't. When people subscribe to you, then everything is sent to their emails. Most people will follow you, but they won't subscribe to you. I'm lucky in that I have a decent subscriber list. So it doesn't matter if Medium doesn't publish everything I write to their streams.

The biggest problem here is that Medium publishes newbie writers to one's stream (recommendations) which are mostly junk. It is also the default setting. The default setting should be one's followers, and every article that one writes should be published to the stream of everybody who follows one.