It's very easy to roll out a Hugo/Jekyll/Zola static blog published for free on Github/Gitlab/Netlify. Then point it to your own domain name so you own your content and don't have to worry about what some 3rd party site does on top of your writing.
Every step is very straightforward individually (configure Jekyll, set up Netlify, buy a domain), but the sum of the parts is still a considerable time sink if it isn't what you do for bread and butter. I know I configured DNS records in uni networking class many years ago, doesn't mean I remember the slightest of it.
The friction obviously goes down if you've already gone through the process before, but if you're simply looking to get your voice out there, it can be very tempting to use a packaged solution. Medium simply has a big name, so that's what a lot of people default to.
There is also https://habr.com , but there is always a risk that they go the way Medium went.
It's a question of do you get more people from medium than people you lose from other sources because your post is on medium?
Medium used to be good, people published good content there. but as they increased their gatekeeping it seemed like there was a sharp decline in quality and quantity.
It only happens more often with Medium because Medium articles are posted more often. I don't think it's an objective indicator of much, beyond HN's generally cantankerous attitude towards the modern web.
If/When Medium decides to add more popups, tracking or advertise over your writing and you'll eventually have to move off the platform, you'll probably regret not having put in the work up front to own and publish your own content.
Also, if your project/article is interesting, people will share it after some minor promoting on social medium or on HN, regardless if it's on Medium or not.
People who are part of the audience you don't have because you aren't on Medium?
If you already have dev experience, I'd argue that rolling out a static blog with a pre-made Hugo/Jekyll theme (lots of Medium-ish clones) would be just as fast as rolling out a self-hosted WordPress blog.
I've never enabled analytics either. I just assume I have 100 million readers. (-:
Because in the early days of Medium you got a lot of reach through them promoting your content on other blog posts. This now went down a lot from what I've read and the additional paywall / nagging module on each visit is not helping either.
I think it'll naturally disappear as more and more people realize that creating their own site isn't that hard any more and having your own domain / brand is useful.
I wish more people realized that. It costs as much as a cup of coffee per month and you can also use it for backups etc. Wordpress comes preinstalled and autoupdating in most hosts.