I appreciate Medium's developments (journey is the goal). But deprecating the Image Placement feature is contraproductive. I am a writer, but I also work visually. Different ways for designing my articles (i.e. with the full size image at the beginning) were a huge advantage of Medium, which articles I mostly consume on my browser, not on mobile.

I understand the benefits of responsive design. but it should't be a reason to cut out the visual ways to support storytelling (both should work simultaneously).

In my opinion, getting rid of image placement features is counterproductive.