Edit: you've been posting flamewar comments repeatedly, and that's not what this site is for, so I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
I have an old Medium account with the partner program activated. It doesn't earn a ton but I'm averaging ~ $10 per 2,500 views. 50k => $1,000 seems steep, but maybe their category is worth more. In addition, you can earn more for new reader referrals.
There's likely multiple reasons for this. One of my gripes with Medium is it's lack of transparency for how writers earn money.
If your views are coming from mainly external sources, Medium won't pay you for that.
Also, Medium pays more for more recent stories. Probably as an incentive to keep posting more articles. 1 hour of readership for a brand new story could get you $2-5. For an older story, it'll probably only earn you less than a dollar.
What makes you say this and what would lying bring them? Looking at their profile clearly shows they've been an active Medium poster for the last year and a half, and probably don't have a deeper association with the platform than that authorship.
