Tony, I believe the real "culprit" is a change in partner payment algorithm that rewards rapid accumulation of member read time. Here's my analysis of data from one semi-viral article from June 2021: https://medium.com/financial-strategy/cracking-the-code-for-mediums-current-partner-payment-calculation-52809b12b1b0

The average payout was just shy of $0.04/minute, but as you'll see in the article, the data show that once you exceed about 120 hours of read time, the per-minute payout grows quickly to over $0.15/minute.

Once the initial high rate of readership subsides, the hightened pay rate also subsides (more gradually), but thus far I haven't been able to collect enough data to find the formula for that drop back to the $0.023/minute baseline.