The crazy thing about this is that although it should promote quality over quantity, it does not.

My articles are read hundreds of times a day so I work on improving them rather than publishing new articles. My earnings so far have been the lowest I have ever received in 3 years, even when I had less articles.

I remember when in an effort to "promote quality" users needed 200 followers to monetise articles. Now you can just "buy premium" to do this.

I believe you are moving towards a model that promotes clickbait and decreases the general quality of writing. On top of that, your writers are being paid less!