[WaltPurvis]

> Is there anyone but me who uses the premium article on medium.com as a filter for what is NOT worth my time?

I humbly suggest that your filter might be broken.

After years of being irritated by Medium's pay wall and reflexively clicking away from blockaded articles, I recently decided to pay the $5, because there was some article I really wanted to read (can't even remember what it was), and because I was tired of paying the mental tax of constantly weighing whether to click on a Medium link because I didn't know if the article would be paywalled or not.

I've since read dozens of high-quality, in-depth articles on a variety of technical topics and other areas of interest.

I find it well worth $5/month and I'll probably continue to subscribe.