I feel like we are beating a dead horse here. Everyone I talk to knows Medium sucks. I personally hate the modal that comes up every time if I'm not logged in and how much of my screen is take up by fixed bars.
Medium has a community though. Facebook sucks, but it has a community. Twitter sucks, but it has a community.
You are going to get more people to see your post if you put it on Medium. You are going to get more "friends" if you are on Facebook. You are going to interact with more people if you are on Twitter.
Creating your own blog will now result in you having to manage your own hosting and possibly even do some "development".
Using another solution may not reach the community you expect to reach.
I find the discussion of HOW to get communities onto better platforms to be a more interesting topic than why the current platform sucks, especially when that platform doesn't even seem to listen to the criticism.
I may be one of the folks not part of the Medium community. I only visit Medium via direct links (on HN, shared on Twitter or shared directly to me by friends). I can't remember the times I've been on Medium's home page or opened up their app to browse.
If those direct links sent me to somewhere else entirely tomorrow I wouldn't care.
If those direct links sent me somewhere else tomorrow I would care, because odds are the alternative would be better. Medium is seriously annoying with its sign-in nags and large amounts of the screen taken up with unnecessary bars.
I just want to read an article. Medium is a worse experience than average in that regard.