I think he's trying to elevate quality, and if that's really the goal, I can see how this approach makes sense. There are a lot of people writing for friends, with stories making no sense if you don't know them. One on my recommended feed has a title along the lines of 'Joe has decided what to do and Jilly is fine about it'. If you don't know who Joe and Jilly are, it's just... well, not something a magazine would commission anyway. And there's a lot like that. I think they want professional articles. I am not sure they will get them with this approach, but we'll see. It doesn't incentivise me to post my best work. But then the reason I started writing fluff was because they didn't incentivise me to post my best work before either!