It seems a number of people believe that the recorded call has Steve Huffman talking, but I don’t see this claim anywhere in the original post.

If you read the section titled "Bizarre allegations by Reddit of Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit", he is directly addressing Steve. He starts with the transcript of the private mod call with Steve and then begins addressing Steve directly. The "you" in that section is the Steve Huffman he had calls with who heard the "threatening" bit

Yeah that part says it’s Steve but where does it say it’s Steve in the phone recording? It just says “Reddit” in the transcript.

Ah I see that he is claiming it’s Steve Huffman via all the use of “you” there.

He later says that he has not personally talked to Steve Huffman.

I think you're right. The Apollo dev didn't directly mention them by name but re-reading the post, I agree that that was not spez. My mistake

Steve appears to have assumed there is no recording, so he can represent the conversation dishonestly. Unfortunately, there is a recording, so we can all hear that it wasn't a threat and that the reddit representative admitted that on the call. The optics of ineptly smearing Christian look terrible for Reddit management.

That joke about the $10M wasn't unprofessional at all. If Steve was honest about the $20M per year opportunity cost, he would've instantly agreed to a one time $10M. Then Reddit would gain an additional $20M per year. But it was only a joke because Steve was lying about the $20M opportunity.

Christian is acting in a surprisingly civil manner despite the repeated lies and smears made by Steve and others at Reddit. I see that as being professional.

That makes no logical sense at all. Why go for $10m if there is no need to because you have already adjusted your own pricing upwards.

Also, what things are priced at is not what they cost …

Reddit specifically said that killing third apps wasn’t their intention, and wanted apps to pay a reasonable amount to cover the costs.

> Also, what things are priced at is not what they cost …

So if that’s the best argument in favor of Reddit, then it’s Reddit that’s being illogical. Or to be more straight, lying.

> Why go for $10m if there is no need to because you have already adjusted your own pricing upwards.

Because $20M is neither the amount Christian was earning, nor the cost that Reddit was paying to provide API access. Steve explicitly said it was a lost opportunity. There was simply no way that Christian could’ve paid that insane price. However, Reddit could’ve earned $20M themselves per year by acquiring Apollo. If the $20M opportunity was even remotely true, that is.