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Comment by shalmanese | Hacker News Reader

This isn't just about the HN comment, the reporter spoke to multiple people inside and outside of Stripe. In my experience, stories like this tend to be in the works for weeks and it's likely the HN comment popped up close to publication so it was quickly folded in, it's not the main thrust of the story.

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Directly in the thread linked by dang the reporter from Protocol was soliciting people directly for a "potential story". It does not appear this was something previously being worked on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29394740

That's also possible, in any case, she found multiple, independent people willing to talk to her and was able to review their correspondences for authenticity. The main thrust of the story is not the HN comment.

Having skimmed the article I'd say that the main thrust of the story is the same as the main thrust of the HN thread, which is why this thread is substantially the same as the previous one.

For what is worth: I didn't even know what Protocol was prior to their offer to talk to me, which is publicly made in the original thread. So I never spoke with them and have no reason to.

Stripe replied to my post, I replied with the details, and moved on. I hope they improve their processes and the rest of the tech industry follow suit.

May I ask what justification they gave? If it is private I understand.

Potential doesn't imply it wasn't being worked on.

Maybe, but there's also a cottage industry of media articles mining HN for material, and those are not the best source for new HN discussion, for obvious reasons (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

From my perspective, the proof of the pudding is whether the HN discussion is substantially different from the previous one. In this case it isn't. The themes are the same and the comments look interchangeable, not counting the throwaway account drama in the previous one.

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