Lol.... Verge disabling comments for this piece; pathetic, no?
Not to mention that it feels like the article was written by a 4-year old...
I try to skip Verge and Medium for the reason that most follow the format of: Salacious clickbait headline, loosely related word salad that ends abruptly. Sometimes it feels like they pay a person off Fiver for content, then just edit the headline.
Fiver is also often why self-pub books get a bad rap too, you'd be surprised how many 'authors' just pay someone in a poorer country, usually the Philippines, to come up with the bulk of something just-enough resembling content. I know this because then they sell this as a business model to aspiring make-it-self-pub-author, you can make more money on a book on how to make money churning out sub-par content with very little work and even less original content.
This is why piracy can be a net benefit to society, to separate the wheat from chaff, so-much-chaff, instead of rewarding hucksters.