Marcus, if any of your stats on based on recent results then you are looking at the basic Medium algorithm at work. Because this is the same trend spotted in 2020, 2021, 2022 and so on. It's how Medium makes money. Like making the holes in the sieve ever smaller so the gold nuggets that drop into the writers wallets are fewer and fewer. Same thing happens when a company changes the look and recipe of a favorite candy bar. The word improved appears on the label while the size of the bar shrinks and the price goes up.