I'm not surprised.

Medium is just a glorified blog site. Online newspapers have a near impossible time breaking even, and medium is no different.

Not to mention the fact that most of its clientele probably uses ad-blockers.

It would be better to turn Medium into a sales funnel for their own premium products and ditch the ads. They have massive amounts of traffic, there are plenty of creative ways to utilize this and turn it into an actual business.

But, it might already be too late to save it.

Why does this article keep getting flagged?

they just need to get more creative with monetizing traffic.