Wow. I just read through that. I'm now googling Medium's history. I started about 18 months ago, so I'm quite recent.

I don't think it's true that in the past you could have kept earning indefinitly. Payments started in 2017 (I think), and since then, algorithms and other things have changed quite frequently.

I might be wrong about this, but only the items that have been chosen for distribution keep circulating, and I've noticed that even those what do keep circulating die after a certain amount of time.

The thing is, if your pieces aren't selected by Medium for circulation, your publication would die anyway.

Personally, I've noticed that unless one writes daily, income falls off pretty rapidly. So I'm assuming that if one doesn't write for 5 years, one might earn $5 in six months, but that's about it.

What has been your experience. (I have passive income on Amazon, Hubpages, Smashwords, etc.)