Re:Apollo will close down on June 30th
by tobyjsullivan on Thursday June 08, 2023 @06:31PM
(#36250148)
I've never even heard of Apollo (not on reddit much) but taking this post as honest, I actually come away with the opposite view.
All the "evil" accusations going around seem to be less related to Reddit wanting to reign in an app using 7B requests/month and more to do with the allegations from the CEO.
The author says he offered to sell Apollo and the CEO responded by "espousing a different reality." There's just one problem with that narrative: his own recording and transcripts show that he did not offer to sell Apollo for $10M so Reddit could shut it down.
The CEO asked him to repeat his statement three times. Over all three times, he not once offered to sell the business nor did he explain that rationale.
What he said was (paraphrased): I hear you saying these API calls are costing you $20M/yr. If you pay me $10M - the cost of 6 months of traffic - I'll make them go quiet.
I understand the author might think he said something different and genuinely thinks the CEO was being disingenuous. But that's not what the evidence shows. The evidence shows a direct request for $10M to stop harming the company. Colloquially speaking, that's blackmail.
When the CEO asked him to clarify, it's clear to me he wanted to make sure he heard correctly. All he was clarifying was "go quietly" (are you threatening to go the press?). As soon as he was sure he got the message, he ended the call politely and immediately.
All the "evil" accusations going around seem to be less related to Reddit wanting to reign in an app using 7B requests/month and more to do with the allegations from the CEO.
The author says he offered to sell Apollo and the CEO responded by "espousing a different reality." There's just one problem with that narrative: his own recording and transcripts show that he did not offer to sell Apollo for $10M so Reddit could shut it down.
The CEO asked him to repeat his statement three times. Over all three times, he not once offered to sell the business nor did he explain that rationale.
What he said was (paraphrased): I hear you saying these API calls are costing you $20M/yr. If you pay me $10M - the cost of 6 months of traffic - I'll make them go quiet.
I understand the author might think he said something different and genuinely thinks the CEO was being disingenuous. But that's not what the evidence shows. The evidence shows a direct request for $10M to stop harming the company. Colloquially speaking, that's blackmail.
When the CEO asked him to clarify, it's clear to me he wanted to make sure he heard correctly. All he was clarifying was "go quietly" (are you threatening to go the press?). As soon as he was sure he got the message, he ended the call politely and immediately.