Medium.com is absolutely rotten for this behaviour.

Not only putting the soft, “sign in to view” but then on some articles requiring a full hard paywall… But you only know this after signing in.

I’m not entirely against charging for well written articles; good writers deserve compensation, but don’t tease me, make me jump through a hoop only to find there’s another much higher hoop sitting beyond it.

It should be illegal to gate content made by users with a registration.

Not the case with Medium, they have, uh, “volunteer” writers. But point stands.