It shocks me to no end that people managed to make this kind of money off of Medium, and managed to get these kinds of views. I've literally never gotten anything past 2k views or reads, and I'm so surprised to see that a single article alone can earn someone 1k$. That's just incredible. I absolutely would love to know how that happens.

I really hope Medium doesn't collapse. I don't think ads are the solution, but they could increase the subscription amount by a few dollars. I've seen writers who used to earn similarly to you claiming they would be alright with that. So that could be a solution there.