Disclosures aren't about whether or not the statement is meant to be actually factual, the whole story, and moral it's about giving people the information they need to weigh when they consider if that's the case. It's reasonable to say a PR employee's response has a high likelihood of being more biased than a generic Stripe employee's response, or at least biased in a different direction. Again that doesn't mean the response is actually "wrong" or just a partial picture or what have you but it does mean many people appreciate considering the possibility of bias when trying to come to a full conclusion.

Because they took the time to disclose the parts of their situation that supported the point they wanted to make (work at stripe, live in Ireland), but disregarded the parts they knew would discredit them a bit (PR for the company). Also, coming to their defense from a throw-away is a curious choice.

I think expectation is that tech companies will be nicer. Pretty sure this comes from the belief that tech workers are unusually talented or rare, and so the worker-company relationship is more like a doctor or classical engineer, less like a factory worker or technician (Not that doctors and other professionals are treated with great respect anymore — it is just a matter of perceptions, people haven’t updated their viewpoints for the current brutally mercenary environment). So, these stories tend to float to the top.

It should be a story with real consequences for the company if anybody’s pension is yanked.