I personally have only once gotten a personalized response to any of my questions posed to Medium. The one response was as to why I has an old post receive over thirty thousand internal views in a day with no revenue. I had to pose that question multiple times and point out they hadn't answered the question until I finally got a response, which by the way was satisfactory.

Every other time I was referred to a link which almost universally was non-responsive to my question.

Like you, I watch my followers rise while my income drops dramatically. Fans of mine have to search out my stories and some Medium publications don't respond to submissions. The curation process has become less and less decipherable and now we don't get to know where even the curated articles have been distributed. This month I may of may not drop below that $100 earnings mark for the first time in almost two years. My high was around $1,700 in a month.

I have always interacted with my readers and never heard the rumor that that affected views. That concern doesn't bother me nearly as much as those I've mentioned previously. I personally know writers that have left Medium because they plagiarized stories for their own publication. I don't know what Medium is doing or why because they aren't transparent. They should do better.