not true, I have started a blog and hosted it on blogspot at first but wasn't satisfied with the style in general and the lack of customization so I built my own in bootstrap + php and hosted it on a 5€/month Server. No tracking, no ads, no external libraries, no referral links, no monetization.
After switching to my own I re-wrote one of the articles of my old blogspot posts (word for word) and because my custom solution was so much easier on the eye, the post picked up and I got TV and Radio interview requests, etc.
Even reddit and hn hugs and thousands of concurrent users didn't bring it down.
You don't need Medium, you need to write stuff that people are interested in reading.