Explain? How does someone apologise 4 times for misunderstanding something and then turn around and pretend they never apologised behind that persons back and that the initial comment was made maliciously?
CEO of reddit is allowed to mishear things, he is also allowed to apologise and move on once things have been clarified.
What is illegal is to then go and say things that are demostrably false that affect someones reputation or chance of employment. If Christian goes to a single interview, meeting, sales pitch etc and someone even makes the briefest comment about "we don't wanna be blackmailed later", he can take Steve Hauffman all the way in front of a judge. Play the phone tape and collect more money that way than any number of years running Apollo.
The again Steve Hauffman changed someones comment on reddit which is a change in production which I am also sure its on very grey rea of legality, specially when people have their reddit account tied to their person, or business. If Retures europe posted about Ukraine and he changed their comment I am sure that would certainly be illegal, he only gets away because he did it to a private citizen and because the ethics board of reddit didn't fire him on the spot as they should have
The developer of Apollo is clearly asking for money. Even in the thread he made today he wrote "Why doesn't Reddit just buy Apollo and other third-party apps?" and then linked to a comment saying Apollo should ask for 100 million dollars. His ask for 10 million dollars wasn't a joke. He is thinking that while reddit is mad, he can get the money just to go away.
How can you say this, when the phone call is right there. You can listen to it yourself that is not what is being said. So much so that the Reddit person on the call apologises up to 4 times.
Would you apologise once, much less 4 times if you where being blackmailed?
Like this is just denial of reality, you have the phone call, we all do, what kind of nonsense attempt of gaslighting is this?
It's a good example of poor reading comprehension. The actual question is "If reddit wants to charge 20M, then why not buy out the app?". It's a valid hypothetical question and a valid possible business outcome. There's nothing threatening about asking that as a hypothetical, that many other redditors have been asking as well. The point of meetings is to address such concerns.
It's something that's obviously true. It would usually be way more subtle.