I'm not sure I understand what you mean. What affiliate marketers?

I know that very few of the people I follow come up on my stream. A few days ago, I went through them all, clicking on each of their streams, and although they had written stories I would have been interested in, they didn't come up on my stream. So I suppose that works the other way as well.

I'm not sure what Medium gains by that. And how do the affiliate marketers work?