[mcpackieh]

Memory can be a funny thing, people repeat stories to themselves to keep memories fresh, but with each retelling the story can shift. "I thought he threatened me but then he clarified that he didn't" could turn into "He seemed to threaten me, but then chickened out when I confronted him" His memory of admitting he made an error could turn into a memory of still feeling threatened but trying to let the Apollo dev save face.

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.

[murphyslab]

> All this is to say that Steve Huffman might not be deliberately lying in this instance.

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...

[sillysaurusx]

This is an excellent comment — thank you for getting these sources together. I’ve favorited it in case I have to explain the situation to someone again.

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.

[irwiss]

Steve or not doesn't improve anything about the situation, even worse, since it wouldn't even hurt his ego to apologize on behalf of employee he chose radio silence instead, it just shows the intent is to make third party devs fuck off the platform by whatever means necessary

[calf]

I read it was another employee, so maybe their impression got miscommunicated and the CEO assumed the worst - except without any evidence. Which is still bad behavior given that he hasn't addressed the recording evidence publicly. IIRC he Kafkaesquely accused the very act of recording as evidence of aggression/blackmailing, which is just totally out to lunch IMO.

[sillysaurusx]

Agreed, and I went down that road too.

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.