Hi Tony, congratulations and thank you for reaching out for suggestions.
While I see some great ideas posted above there are also some I would disagree with. Such as the idea of demonetising any particular category or topic on the platform. While it sounds good in theory, it creates a short bridge to demands for another topic people don’t like or start seeing in their feed to be demonetised. This platform is a great melting out of ideas and don’t want to see writers hesitant to share anything for fear of not getting the reward they deserve.
Another one is requests to ban some particular links, one I saw a few times was about people asking for someone to buy them a coffee. If Medium was to ban links like this it would be like YouTube banning creators from using a Patreon link. What might serve better and is an idea I have previously submitted is including some similar functionality inside Medium. Where a reader and either buy credits or straight up make a donation to a writer.

One area which could be improved is the search functionality. Multiple times I have tried searching for an individual writer, it comes back with no results for people. However, I find the person later with the exact name I searched. How many other things are being missed when people are searching?

I also really wonder how followers and even publications are serving many writers. I have 300 followers and get no views when I self publish an article without promoting it outside of Medium myself. The same has been true with publishing into publications with hundreds of followers, no views without my own promotional efforts outside of Medium. If personal or publication followers are not reading what is the point?

Thank-you for your time, I look forward to seeing Medium becoming even better.
Joel