I only hope that Medium will read this and take stock of it, or... that enough of us who recognise this problem get a bit more organised and do something about this directly.

To your knowledge, has anyone ever contacted them about this and been given a response?

I'm still very new here, so I'm finding out as I go along. But I'm glad to find your post and others like it, because if I can recognise these issues so early into my stay, then I can only imagine how much this must be getting to longer-term writers here.