I’ve been thinking about this a bit and I think this change (along with the one to remove the ability to have your own custom domain) is a preparatory step to give publications the ability to put posts behind the paywall. For good or for bad, we know Medium has decided that publications will get all of the payout from paywalled stories and and it is for them to compensate the writer. Publications can also decide whether they want to paywall a story. To protect the writers though, it is important that they make a considered, informed decision when they let a publication have their story. Otherwise, they may be losing out on an income. Hence this workflow has to go and be replaced by one where editors reach out to writers directly, asking them to consider the submission guidelines of a publication (which I expect will in the future need to be enhanced to include the payout policy of the publication), provide their paypal emails / bank accounts / whatever and decide if they want their story in there.