Medium does have consent from the author and the vast majority of page views are going to authors who know a lot about what they are doing. I think that's worth noting. A Medium link is most likely to an article that exists to be behind the paywall because the author thought they could make some money and get good distribution that way. A lot of these articles wouldn't exist otherwise.
I too used to think so and that's how it was earlier. Check again.
For example, other day I found one post on Netflix tech blog was also behind paywall.. check posts from famous tech blogs of companies, you would find some of them behind paywall. I don't think big corporates want to make money from their tech blogs.
The deal is for two things, money and distribution. It's possible that people are choosing to put something behind the paywall for distribution. But I agree that's unlikely in Netflix's case. But I'm 100% certain that the Netflix is the one who put it behind the paywall by having that option checked at the time of publication.
