Not all of them are cheapskates.

There are some people who can't afford to pay that extra monthly charge.

A few of them have responded to this piece.

If you can't afford to pay to become a Medium friend, you shouldn't.

And not everyone is as smart as you are when it comes to crunching the numbers. I relied on your analysis of the 3X and 4X stuff because I couldn't figure it out myself.

https://pcunix.medium.com/medium-just-told-us-what-their-minimum-cut-is-7fa5ad754765