What I'm saying here is that friend links aren't a uniformly effective tool. They can be negated when by being passed around, and I'm not able to attach them to articles in a way that will allow non-paying readers to finish reading them. If non members open the article and click on the friend link I've attached, they'll just be directed to another article that they can't scroll all of the way down before being given Medium's paywall.

And regarding the stated goal change, in a few of the posts in the Medium Blog of the last couple of months, they spoke about how they were changing their policy in hopes of bringing higher quality stories to readers moving forward.