Personally I am a fan of the new requirements for the MPP. I also think the YouTube requirements are a good barrier as well.

These barriers help to build a more engaged community and help to remove some of the costs of one off beginners. The number of people that likely join the MPP write one or two articles and subsequently get a couple of cents income incurs a much larger cost for Medium. In some cases, their payment processing costs might be greater than the amount being paid to a MPP member.

I have also read somewhere they will start a minimum payout amount before they send a payment as well. How much and when this will start I cannot recall. But it is also a good idea.

The thing is if getting a few cents is that important there are probably other ways that people can achieve that. But if people are expecting to earn bigger amounts from the MPP the least they can do is put in some effort to gain followers and meet what is a very easy bar to overcome. I would not be surprised if in the future Medium raises this bar and requires more followers and even maybe a minimum read time or something closer to the YouTube approach.