I think so too.

If you’ve been following the earnings stats Medium shares each month, you’ll notice that the writers who make more than $100 has been decreasing over the year (8% in January, 6.2% in August) while the highest earning writer and story has been raking up more and more money. In other words, here on Medium the rich have been getting richer while the poor have been getting poorer.

If I was Medium, I’d consider that a problem, especially since they are certainly aware that they have tons of awesome writers who just don’t earn much at all and may thus give up and leave Medium. That’s not in Medium’s interest.

I think that’s also why for a time they kept followers hidden in the new profiles (you won’t follow someone just because he already has lots of followers) and why they tried removing author names from the homepage (if you don’t know the author, you won’t click a story just because it’s been written by Mr. Famous).