Re. employees not showing up to defend the company: I always find it weird when people do that. There are only downsides to speaking about your company publicly.
(In spite of this I confess that I devoured the Stripe thread alongside a heaping bowl of popcorn. Some combination of Gell-Mann amnesia and a vulgar taste for tabloid gossip, I guess.)
Disgruntled ex-employees will leave bad feedback, people who have invested a lot of themselves in the company will leave good feedback (and perhaps not even see some of the problems others see).
Not sure if they ended up posting but when I was reading the thread there weren't any.