I don't condone those stories, but I can see how a few of them can be useful for those trying to find out how profitable using their writing skills on Medium would be. The problem is during the pandemic it seems the number of writers has exploded. There are plenty more readers than writers, at least my followers are about 70% just readers. Some people mean well by sharing, as they're hoping to inspire. Others take advantage of it and come up with fictitious numbers because they know the poor should just starting out will eat those up like candy. Really, the fault though is with Medium. It could very easily post a few example scenarios of earnings for people to go by when researching. That would stop all the pointless tone-deaf earnings articles.

What far less writers do is write about their growth journey as a writer, share their learnings, struggles, wins. Sharing actual earning numbers though, that's like posting on LinkedIn your monthly wages. Why would anyone do that?