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Comment by newaccount74 | Hacker News Reader

> maybe Huffman literally forgot that he misunderstood the Apollo dev

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.

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Is this correct?

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.

It was a different employee than Steve on the call that apparently perpetuated the misunderstanding despite it being cleared up immediately and the employee apologizing; however, Steve continued to repeat the claim after Apollo Dev had refuted and proved the claim false, which the media (such as The Verge) had picked up.

So though it was not originated from Steve, Steve perpetuated it when he should have known better.

I looked it up, Selig said it was an employee [1]:

> 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...

I just want to thank you for leaving your comment. It’s a rare experience to have my opinion shifted so dramatically due to a crucial missing piece of info. People will say that Steve is still at fault — and he is — but intent was the crucial part of it for me. Being foolish is infinitely better than being evil, and I just couldn’t see how Steve making up a lie was anything but evil.

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.

He may have originally been misinformed, but instead of apologising, he doubled down and said the call was leaked (in his AMA). Then went right back to repeating the lies in interviews.

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.

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