You don’t subscribe, but you do interact. The point of email is making sure you don’t miss something but you tend to be able to follow without needing that reminder.

I have the emails because I open them when I’m ready to read the story which means it might sit for a day or two but I will always remember to go check.

The other huge part of subscribing by email is that if Medium doesn’t do so well, you can take your list of people who receive your stories here, and import the list to Substack or another platform. This means that your audience can follow you elsewhere and you begin building your own audience rather than have Medium do it.