This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask you not to insinuate astroturfing without evidence. Please don't post like that here; it's a toxic trope that people are nearly always imagining and projecting onto one another. Mind you, your post was far from the worst example of this—but it still needs nipping in the bud.
In this case, the history of the users commenting is enough to make it overwhelmingly unlikely that they were paid, and the well-known propensity of users to comment just on a title clinches it.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply astroturfing. My comment is asking how many people "paid to read the article" (because it's behind a paywall), and not "were paid to comment here".
Still not a great comment I admit, but with the amount of discussion going on I would be surprised if everyone is subscriber or if they are going off of the headline alone.
In this case, the history of the users commenting is enough to make it overwhelmingly unlikely that they were paid, and the well-known propensity of users to comment just on a title clinches it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html