> It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected.

Your memory is very, very different from mine. I remember Medium being heavily criticized by (sorry, lack of a better term) "tech nerds" for stuff like the article brings up when it first came out. People complained about it not working when Javascript was disabled and bloat for a text website, load times, etc., all sorts of stuff. People said they refused to visit Medium. In fact, it was so negative I'm a bit surprised it got as popular as it did with tech blogs.

>Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute.

Only "tech nerds" care about those sorts of things. Joe User reads Medium just fine without any tricks, add-ons and blocks.