How did this apply? I admit I haven't been following the drama closely.
Every time I try to describe the event, it ends up sounding like low quality flamebait. Yet it’s a complete description of what happened.
He never acknowledged it, either. It was just evil. Usually there are confounding factors or reasons to be on the founder’s side, or to at least see the situation from their point of view. But in this case, it was a blatant lie.
The most charitable explanation I’ve ever been able to think of is “maybe Huffman literally forgot that he misunderstood the Apollo dev because he was so stressed.” But eventually I concluded that requires so much mental gymnastics that I may as well compete at the Olympics. And even in that situation, he should’ve said something.
Huffman was a part of the original YC batch. There were no YC alums before him. This was the era when pg wrote “Don’t be evil”, which was at least a good idea, if not an implicit guideline to all founders. And then this happens a decade and some change later.
All this is to say that Steve Huffman might not be deliberately lying in this instance. Maybe. It's hard to give him too much credit since he's already shown himself to be a snake who edits other people's comments and that's certainly not something that could be done by accident. Nonetheless, memory is a funny thing.
Unfortunately what sealed it for me was Steve’s response during his followup AMA when someone asked him about the Apollo dev. He said that the dev often said one thing and did another. Christian (the dev) called him out on it and said “I give you permission to name a single time this has happened.” No response.
In other words, Steve doubled down yet again and tried to do the same damn thing after he was caught. Why lie like this?
A developer’s reputation is their most important asset. What Steve did (or tried to do, till the phone conversation proved otherwise) was simply awful.
Huffman has had 26+ days to correct the record. He has done nothing to that end. He made a "potentially career-ending" allegation, which hurt the reputation of the developer of Apollo, Christian Selig.
June 8th: Selig released his side of the story, along with messages which were sent to him from a Reddit employee as well as from moderators engaged in a subsequent call with Reddit:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230608172250/https://old.reddi...
June 9th (a full 24 hours later): Huffman had the facts, including the recording, which confirmed their mutual understanding. Huffman could have revised his stance there and then. Instead, Huffman doubled down, effectively reiterating the lie through his scare-quote and instead criticized Selig for acting publicly to defend his reputation against Reddit's internal and external slander:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230616033947/https://old.reddi...
Huffman is the CEO of the Reddit platform and nothing is stopping him from apologizing for making a potentially "potentially career-ending lie" against the developer of Apollo, Christian Selig. He hasn't made a peep on the platform since June 9th.
If it wasn't deliberate, then he's had nearly a month to speak up for the truth. At some point, refusing to correct the record, a lie does become deliberate.
---
Here's TechCrunch's reporting on the situation, if you prefer to hear it from a journalist:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/09/reddit-ceo-doubles-down-on...
But! There’s suddenly a ray of hope. See the comment upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36612285
Do you happen to know whether the call was with Steve himself, or some other Reddit employee? If it wasn’t Steve, then this whole thing was a giant miscommunication, which I’ve always suspected from the beginning.
Boy it’s nice to feel hopeful about this for once. I really hope it wasn’t Steve.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the person on the call wasn't Huffman himself. Selig was talking to some Reddit employee, who presumably then told Huffman about the call.
It's possible that the employee who talked to Selig didn't 100% accurately describe what was said in the call (because he didn't have a transcript to check what was said), and then Huffman misunderstood whatever the employee said further to come up with the blackmail accusation.
I thought the call was with Steve himself. If this is true, it changes everything.
Would anyone mind checking? My wife and I have been in the hospital for a month, and it’s 2am here. Their voices and mannerisms sounded similar and I always assumed it was Steve.
If it wasn’t Steve, then I’ll immediately reverse my opinion. The evildoer was the employee.
That’s a rather crucial detail.
So though it was not originated from Steve, Steve perpetuated it when he should have known better.
> As mentioned in the last post, thankfully I recorded the phone call and can show this to be false, to the extent that Reddit even apologized four times for misinterpreting it:
> Reddit: "That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately."
> (Note: as Steve declined to ever talk on a call, the call is with a Reddit representative)
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_t...
He didn’t lie. He was misinformed.
Steve is still making questionable choices, but thank god he’s not who I thought he was. I was about to give up on pg’s original vision of YC and conclude that it must’ve all been a grift, just like the peanut gallery has been saying all along.
Really. Thanks. Have a wonderful week, wherever you are.
From his AMA: >His “joke” is the least of our issues. His behavior and communications with us has been all over the place—saying one thing to us while saying something completely different externally; recording and leaking a private phone call—to the point where I don’t know how we could do business with him.
A) it wasn't Huffman
B) the dev absolutely was trying to get money out of them. You can't make a demand, then say 'uh, im kinda kidding' repeatedly. If someone held a gun to your head and asked for your wallet multiple times, each time saying they were kinda joking, what would you do?
That said, Huffman et al absolutely shouldn't have aired dirty laundry.
It sounded to me a lot like 'well, if I'm costing you money, give me money and I'll stop costing you money.'
Quotes my interpretation, not direct quotes.
I've listened to the recording and it's obvious he was joking every time he asked for the $10 million. I want to know why you think otherwise and am asking for the exact timestamp where you believe his threat could be interpreted as serious. I honestly have no idea which part of the recording could be interpreted as a serious threat and I don't believe such a timestamp exists, hence my inability to find it.
this is false?
Any country can claim jurisdiction on any action committed anywhere; the question is whether that country can reach you.
What protection.
In fact only an American would have the temerity to imagine that their laws might apply to someone in another country merely by calling them on the phone.
The law exists to protect the person being recorded, so if the person being recorded is somewhere where the law is in effect, then it can be applied.
There is case-law supporting something similar within the US at least: if a person in e.g. California (where all parties' consent is needed) is recorded by a person in e.g. Virginia (where only one party's consent is needed) then they have violated the California law.
Recording is a passive act that entirely takes place entirely within the territory of the person doing the recording.
Whereas hacking involves accessing a computer system that is in a different jurisdiction, which necessarily involves actively communicating with it and sending it commands.
Recording a call is more like listening to a radio station. Countries may make it illegal to listen to certain communications, but as soon as those radio waves leave that jurisdiction then they are fair game for anyone who wants to listen to them.
Pretty much everybody should be cautious about entering the US!