Definition of a threat:
a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done.
Let’s assume for a second that the Apollo dev DID in fact mean what they thought he meant at first. Can someone explain to me how that would make it a threat? "Buy my app, or else… " what? Or else what? In what universe could that even have been a threat?
I keep thinking back on this and how this whole argument about whether or not it was a threat is a complete red herring because there was nothing he can threaten them WITH, so how can you construe it as a threat?
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The interpretation Spez is trying to get people to buy is based on Christian saying something along the lines of, “if you want Apollo to keep quiet.”
It’s important to note that, for developers, and especially people who work with APIs, it is extremely common to refer to “apps that make a lot of network calls or otherwise clog the server logs up” as “noisy.” If some program or application is calling too many APIs, or makes a lot of log spam, it’s “noisy.”
The comment Christian made was during a part of the call where Reddit was trying to accuse Apollo of being “unoptimized” and making too many API calls. Reddit was calling Apollo noisy. They didn’t use that term, of course, but being the long term developer he is, and speaking and thinking like a developer, Christian made an off the cuff statement about "if you want Apollo to go quiet. As in not noisy. As in making no API calls. As in shutting down.
This was originally misinterpreted, but Christian clarified his statement and Spez immediately understood the misunderstanding. We can hear this much in the recording.
Naturally, being the asshole he is, Spez is trying to “spin” this as trying to make the public believe, “Christian threatened us! He demanded money in exchange for being quiet, otherwise he would try to speak out publicly against us, ruin our reputation, and ruin our IPO! What fiend!”
Spez, I don’t know why you’re so worried about Christian dragging Reddit’s name through the mud. You’re doing a fine job of that yourself. Keep it up!
Maybe threat of bad PR? That is all I think think of.
Seems like they have no trouble doing that on their own.
I guess. I feel like the supposed threats I can think of are illogical enough to dismiss the accusation outright.
The statement that was supposed to be a “threat” was something along the lines of “if you want Apollo to go quiet, you can buy out the app.” In context, they were talking about how often Apollo sends API requests to Reddit’s servers. If Reddit bought Apollo and made it into an official app, then it wouldn’t have to use the public API, so it’d “go quiet” in that sense. The Apollo dev explained all this during the call, so Reddit didn’t just misunderstand the context, they had to intentionally ignore it.
Yeah but that would be a pretty empty threat as Reddit is fully empowered to simply block api access.
Here’s the transcript. It was a genuine misunderstanding – “have Apollo quiet down,” Steve took to mean “I’ll make noise in the press if you don’t agree” when Christian was talking about quiet vs. loud in API usage. He meant “quiet” in terms of, we’ll consume less resources of the API. It was honestly confusing; I think Christian was genuinely unclear, but the confusion was cleared up, and whoever was talking on Reddit’s end acknowledged the misunderstanding and apologized for getting heated at the perceived threat in the first place.
Then Steve later summarized that conversation as if that clarification-of-the-misunderstanding had never happened, and got angry about it when Christian “leaked” the transcript and recording of the call to clarify what had actually happened.
willful misunderstanding. absolutely no one should trust anything spez says
Yeah I’ve heard the call. My point was that whether or not it’s a threat should be a red herring as there is nothing he could reasonably threaten with. To act all offended over at best an empty threat is telling.
Yea it’s just mumbo jumbo, trying to make users angry with Apollo dev to divert some blame
Probably a threat to his precious ego
he was being sarcastic and whoever he was talking to from reddit never considered he might be recorded. probably soon this tail to try to score points with spez. big mistake
It wasn’t even sarcastic, it was barely a poor choice of words, just that Reddit could make it quiet (as in API calls, reddits claim was that Apollo was too “loud”) by buying it
It’s important to note here that the Apollo dev is in Canada and it is legal for him to record the call as it is single party consent there. So he’s not doing anything nefarious by recording the call and primarily does it for his own record keeping and is good operational prudence really.
Edit: Apollo Dev also only made the recording and transcript available to clear his name after Reddit/Spez accused him of threatening actions.
