I gave up on reading on Medium mostly because most texts recommended to me are low quality and ideologically biased. It is sad, because I gave up after a few years, when by investing a lot of time, I was able to find many good articles.
As a writer, I might have higher expectations. But, as a writer, I know as well, that some of my pieces are better than others, and my potential readers are interested in only some of the subjects I write about.
I still hang on, because the open format gives me an opportunity to explore uncharted waters. For my membership fee I expect to get recommendations to all sorts of informative and well written articles.
Sadly, the Medium leaders see the purpose of the platform as supporting writers. I accept that on the open forum, most writers might publish a good article only occasionally. So far, Medium leaders did not figure it out how to point me to those pears they have.
The Friend of Medium concept does not address my expectations.