He posted a transcript of what Steve told moderators. He posted a transcript - and recording - of the exact conversation with Steve in which this part of the conversation takes place. Both are in the OP reddit thread here. Just search for "transcript" in the page.
It's the sort of thing you'd say to mods if you think it will get them off your back.
The part I pasted, right?
> Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
That's not a transcript. That's a sentence devoid of context. We're now two steps removed -- not only do we need to believe Christian, but Christian needs to believe whatever mod sent that to him. Who's the mod? Why is the mod telling Christian anything? Why was Steve talking to mods about Apollo's threat? None of this makes any sense. I don't think anyone has malicious intent here –– bet you $50 that it turns out to be some weird miscommunication. After all, there's zero benefit for Steve to be doing any of those things, and a whole lot of downside. Ins't a miscomm the more plausible theory?
Ironically, if Christian's claims are unsubstantiated, then he's slandering Steve. But Steve slandering Christian to internal employees is precisely what Christian's so angry about. But why would internal employees break ranks and go tell Christian?
There's something more going on here. I'm not sure what.
> He posted a transcript - and recording - of the exact conversation with Steve in which this part of the conversation takes place.
That's the point -- all that he's posted is a transcript where Steve says mea culpa. Then he posted some other person's two-sentence "transcript" of Steve badmouthing him. But it's not a transcript; it's weird.
I'm talking about after the call, which is what the central claim of the post hinges on. The claim is that Steve went to internal employees and said that Christian was threatening Reddit. Where's that transcript? There's only two sentences, and those two sentences came from some third party moderator that wasn't even introduced in the story.
Everyone is being hypnotized by the audio recording. But the audio recording doesn't say anything about Steve. The only one who said anything about Steve was the unnamed moderator, which we get no info about beyond two very weird sentences.
I give up. I keep trying to say "Hey, guys, the audio recording is actually a red herring," and then everybody keeps saying to go listen to the audio recording.
> Me: No, no, I'm sorry. Yeah one more time. I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen too. As is, it's quite difficult.
> Reddit: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think it's… I don't know what you mean by quiet down. I find that to be-
> Me: No, no, sorry. I didn't mean that to-
> Reddit: I'm going to very straightforward to you too, it sounds like a threat. And I'm just like "Oh interesting". Because one of the things we're trying to do is say "You have been using our API free of cost for many, many years and we have absolutely sanctioned - you have not broken any rules." And now we're changing our perspective for what we're telling you - and I know you disagree with it. That hey, we want to operate on a thing that is financially, you know, footing. And so hopefully you mean something completely different from what I said when you say like "go quietly", I just want to make sure.
> Me: How did you take that, sorry? Could you elaborate?
> Reddit: Oh, like, because you were like, "Hey, if you want this to go away".
> Me: I said "If you want Apollo to go quiet". Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage.
> Reddit: Oh, go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry.
> Me: Like it's a very-
> Reddit: Yeah, that's a complete misinterpretation on my end.
> Me: Yeah. No, no, it's all good.
> Reddit: I apologize. I apologize immediately.
> Me: No, no, no, it's all good.
> Reddit: Because what we're hearing in some conversations is folks are, you know, like in other- making threats, and we're like "Hey, that's not a conversation that we want to have". So I immediately apologize.
> Me: Oh, no, no, it's all good. I'm sorry if it sounded like that.
Link to audio: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-3...
Maybe I'm missing it, but that claim seems unverified. Did Christian post a transcript somewhere of exactly what Steve said to the mods? It seems like this could all be a big misunderstanding...
Basically, the whole post hinges on the claim that spez was telling internal employees that Christian was making threats. But neither the calls nor the transcript seems to give any details about what exactly spez said. I'm inclined to take Christian's word, but we should all be aware that we are in fact taking him at his word, rather than the claim being proven.
It seems really hard to believe that spez would apologize for misunderstanding him and then immediately tell employees that he was threatening Reddit. This feels like a misunderstanding rather than malicious intent.
> Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:
> Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
This doesn't sound like a transcript. I don't know what it is, but that's not how anyone in a work call would behave. Supposing Apollo did threaten Reddit, why would spez even mention that to the mods? Something's weird.