Something is definitely going on, and you may well be right about it. I know that even as my folowers went up dramatically in the last couple of months, actual views are down by about half. Reads even more.

Now, in my case what I've noticed is that the social media platforms I used to rely on to drive people here (and at least tweak the Medium algorithm with views early on after a piece was published), namely, Twitter and FB are pretty clearly throttling how much they let folks see Medium content.

Twitter was never that good about it, in my experience, but on my public FB page, I could post a piece and expect it to be seen by at least 20 percent of my followers. Lately, the reach is more like 2 percent, or often less than 1 percent...

But the internal views collapsing...that's confusing

When you say they may move to a system where you get paid more by your personal subscribers, do you mean overall followers or the ones who sign up to get emails when you publish a new piece? Just curious.