As a reader I avoid Medium based articles.

For one thing, the UI for wildly different blogs are the same. This means that I am unable to place anything I read in context. As a visual learner, one of the ways I remember stuff I read is by remembering the entire context (for blogs this is usually the look of the blog). Medium completely eliminates that crutch for me.

I feel the overuse of annoying funny GIFs in the middle of articles is far more prevalent on Medium pages. I suspect because it's one of the only ways for authors to personalize their content visually.