You give Medium Staff too much credit. The message you received is an automatic, scheduled response that is issued when a certain time has passed. Ev Williams and Medium seem to concern themselves more on the ideological aspect of running this platform, ignoring most, if not all, liberal values that spawned much of the internet, the open-source tools they used to build the system, and even the appeal that created social platforms.
For them, the authors, readers, and commentators are means to an end. As Ev noted himself, while profusely apologizing, in an interview about six months ago, that he feels remorse for being part of the platform that gave Donald Trump the means to become president.
As I see it, Medium either follow the ideals of a free and open marketplace of ideas or they will become yet another MySpace platform that serves the tiny echo-chamber of the far left. I find it unfortunate, as they have all the technology and approach to be one of the greatest platforms.