Steve Huffman—Steve Huffman falsely accused Apollo developer Christian Selig of $10M extortion, refuted by audio recordings
In June 2023, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told employees that Apollo developer Christian Selig was blackmailing the company for $10 million. Selig publicly refuted the claim with audio recordings of his conversation with a Reddit employee that disproved the extortion allegation. In a June 9, 2023 AMA, Huffman doubled down, criticizing Selig for 'recording and leaking a private phone call' and saying he didn't know how Reddit could do business with him. The false accusation appeared to be retaliation against Selig for publicly disclosing Reddit's prohibitive API pricing that would force Apollo to shut down.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Governance | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Press Freedom | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.429 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.57)
Evidence (1 signal)
Huffman accused Christian Selig of extortion, Selig released audio recordings disproving claim
In June 2023, Christian Selig alleged in a Reddit post that CEO Steve Huffman told employees Selig was blackmailing the company for $10 million. Selig provided audio recordings between himself and a Reddit employee that disproved the extortion claim. In a June 9, 2023 AMA, Huffman doubled down, writing: '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.'