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Having just listened, I can understand that misinterpretation!

I can buy that Selig's words may have been intended, at some level, as a jokey hypothetical to draw a point into contrast. That is, he meant it as (fleshed-out sympathetic rewording): "If this really is just about a $20M drain to you, it'd be a dead-simple & efficient solution to pay $10M to make me go away quietly forever. But of course I wouldn't ask for that & you wouldn't do it, thus this isn't really just about solving your $20M/year cost center, but other mutually-agreeable futures."

But Selig's actual wording in the clip is exactly how people coyly/semi-deniably imply that they be handed various kinds of "go-away" or "hush" money. (That includes arrangements that might not technically be "blackmail" as a legal definition, but feel like vernacular 'blackmail' to laypeople or business-negotiators.)

Selig's opening words, of this audio clip, absolutely sound like an actionable offer "pay me this specific cash amount & your troubles – both technical/competitive & in terms of any ruckus I can raise in public – go away." I mean, here's Selig's exact words:

"Uh, hey, I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20M a year, you cut me a check for $10M, and we can both skip off into the sunset. 6 months of use, we're good. That's mostly a joke."

Until "that's mostly a joke", & depending on earlier context/levels-of-mutual-trust, that sounds like a specific offer to do whatever eases things for Reddit in return for $10M cash.

And even after "that's mostly a joke", the 'mostly' leaves open that maybe something of this shape is legitimately in Selig's mind as a resolution.

> Uh, hey, I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20M a year, you cut me a check for $10M, and we can both skip off into the sunset. 6 months of use, we're good.

This is an offer to sell Apollo. The opening stage of a negotiation. There’s nothing wrong with saying this, at all.

That's a possible interpretation. We don't hear the discussion before it. And it's a weird wording to merely offer a sale of assets for Reddit to then manage.

The word choice, to my ears, more implies a "just gimme cash to make me shut up & disappear" attitude, or at least openness to torpedoing every other goal as long as the cash prize is big enough.

I further think Selig's rush to qualify it as "mostly a joke" is evidence that he noticed, in the moment, that what he just said sounded a bit brutally grubby. Maybe by this point he was getting angry his other hints that he mainly wanted an attractive buyout weren't being met by serious offers.

As I mentioned, such a tactic could be far from what the law declares as actionable 'blackmail' but still feel like a tough, "play ball or else" shakedown on the other side of the negotiation – the sort of thing people commonly describe, though somewhat figuratively/hyperbolically, as 'blackmail'.

Is there anything "wrong" with that style of making joking payoff offers to "skip off into the sunset"? Well, in negotiations, as long as you're not breaking the law or sabotaging your longer-run reputation, what's 'right' is largely what gets you what you want, both for now and in enduring relationships.

Did Selig get what he wanted? Does he come off as a desirable & trustworthy counterparty in other future collaborations & negotiations?

I think he's got a legitimate beef with Reddit in many dimensions, but at the same time this audio clip doesn't make him seem super clear & fair in his communications.

The "mostly a joke" bit is him suggesting that while his previous bit was just making a point about the $20m insistence, he'd be open to selling and walking away. He doesn't shut the door on selling it in the linked post either.
> "pay me this specific cash amount & your troubles – both technical/competitive & in terms of any ruckus I can raise in public – go away."

Wait a second, isn't that exactly what Reddit is doing by charging for API access with thirty days notice?

It's still very unclear what exactly right it would be buying with that $10 million. Instead of Apollo shutting itself down right it would pay for the privilege of being the one to shut it down? The payment doesn't make any sense and doesn't help Reddit offset the losses in any way.

The Proposal was to have reddit by Apollo and monetize it, all the talk about going quiet doesn't make sense.

Of course it would be on his mind as a resolution. He makes a living building that app. If his expenses are covered for the forseeable future, that’s a mutually beneficial offer. He says it’s mostly a joke because he knows Reddit won’t go for it, even though it would make a lot of sense.
Or because as long as you say 'just joking' after a threat no one can say you threatened them right?

Really a thinly veiled attempt to ask for a buy out. The guy only needs to charge his users 2.50 more to make up for lost ad revenue, but instead he chose to burn down Reddit.

$2.5/month right? Starting right now because otherwise the bill at the end of the month becomes impossible to pay.
> we can both skip off into the sunset

TBH that doesn't sound menacing to me...however you misinterpret it, it feels more like making a deal than blackmailing. Granted, even taking money to let a publicly discussed issue go away is more akin to a settlement.

Selig's posted audio doesn't vindicate him like he thinks it does. He struggles to speak about what he actually wants and should have hired an attorney (or someone who doesn't clam up and make unfunny "jokes" when nervous) to do the talking for him. I respect what the kid has done, but he's clearly out of his element here and I can totally see how reddit execs took it that way.
I'm shocked that people are interpreting this as not fishing for a payoff, honestly. "We can both skip off into the sunset" does not mean "rewrite the app to do fewer API calls", as he tries to claim later in the call. It means it's done, over, everyone is happy. And why would he say "mostly joking" if he actually meant doing fewer API requests? Nothing about this recording or transcript makes me think Selig is an honest person.
That isn't what he claims later in the call. He claims that he'd shut down the app for $10m. How is that unreasonable?
The app is getting shut down for $0 regardless, why would anyone pay $10m to shut it down?
I'm sure the price is negotiable. Off the top of my head, the reasons you'd pay any nonzero amount of money for it are:

1. You avoid all of this drama. Christian makes a post that says, "Reddit offered me a lot of money and I said yes because I want to have a lot of money. It's been a pleasure working with them and it's been a pleasure developing Apollo for you. Peace out." Reddit ran this playbook with Alien Blue and it worked out.

2. Reddit could rather enshittify Apollo gradually, and/or fold Apollo's subscription model into Reddit's own model to maintain a premium power-user experience. It is an absurdly well-polished app, even if you added advertisements to it. It is a better user experience if the app gets worse slowly than if it disappears all at once and forces everyone to migrate to a new app. Reddit ran this playbook with Alien Blue and it worked out.

Enshittify! What a nice verb
Thank Cory Doctorow[1] for that one.

[1]https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

The goal of reddit here is to obviously shut down the app, he was saying "just pay me then" - he's obviously annoyed. Stupid thing for him to say for sure, it shut the "negotiation" down.
I don't really buy the phrase "go quiet" in terms of API usage, it does sound like the developer was backtracking when called out on it
Why misquote? He said "have Apollo quiet down" not "go quiet" he only said "go quiet" after the Reddit rep said that, in response.

At least have your facts straight.

Okay but what does this even mean in terms of API usage? Why would Reddit buying Apollo "quiet down" its API usage? I accept I may just be missing something here but I don't understand this.
Because if reddit owns it, they can shut it down and nag the users to install the official app.
It’s getting shut down even if they don’t buy it.
Definitely.

It just makes no sense otherwise.

I mean, even in the text snippets you can see that they seem to understand after a bit as to what Christian was talking about.
in both the text snippet and the audio it sounds to me like 2 people politely pretending that the offer wasn't made. Notice how the CEO basically immediately cuts off the call after the "clarification"