Comes up often in my day to day, too. I work in tech (and invest in startups around the future of work). People wonder whether it's the beginning of something more widespread... and nobody's crying a river for Google employees, it's more that sometimes change begins with people in the best position to bargain...
There's something here -- like "it came from a human" is, by definition, something only humans can do. Handmade, artisanal, we already have a lot of stuff like that.
Communities supporting products that the community dislikes are like restaurants with a good location getting away with crappy food.
The product is only as good as it needs to be to serve the community -- if the community's stuck with it, then the product has no gravity pulling it to get better. That said, I happen to think Medium is just fine. The complaints in the article seem (a) to apply only to some uses, really and (b) fall into the "if you dislike it so much, make your own damn mousetrap" camp?