I also suspect some writers just haven't yet adapted to the new Medium. Not too long ago, it was all about curation, and back then, longer, well thought out pieces, with lots of references and all that, was what Medium was looking for.

By the way, does text-only short form get distributed nowadays?

I know comics get distributed, which are a type of short-form, but I haven't done any text-only short form, which I know were not distributed just a couple of months ago. I'm wondering if that has changed.