this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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It was a crime. Defamation. Though I don't know how that plays out internationally, spez definitely committed a (very difficult to prove) crime.
Non-US citizens can sue within the US the same as any US citizen can. It’s the same rules where first standing has to be proven and go from there.
An example of this playing out was when Elon falsely called that submarine British guy living in Thailand a pedo on Twitter (more than once actually). He was able to sue Elon in US courts (I believe he lost that case for some BS reason or another, but the point is it can be done).
So I think the issue here is with the US. The evidence disproving the blackmail was in the form of a recorded phone call. In Canada that is perfectly legal but in the US there needs to be consent or it’s inadmissible in court.
I’d provide links but I don’t have time at the moment and honestly don’t want to go back to Reddit to find them but the main post was on the Apollo subreddit. If it still exists it shouldn’t be difficult to find. It even included full downloads of the phone call.
Edit: worth saying I don’t believe the creator of Apollo intends to sue so this is all hypothetical on our behalf.
Agreed on the edit. I’d go further and say it’s almost definitely not worth his time/effort/money because even if he does win, which is never guaranteed, or squeezing a fat settlement… I dunno, laws are fucked and doing it isn’t worth it imo for a few stupid comments that I find unlikely to really do anything to his career outside of reddit app development (which is dead now anyway…)
As far as the court case stuff goes, first, not a lawyer. So, you know, you could stop reading now and perhaps should! However, if the case is basically “the reddit CEO said X and Y things publicly accusing my client of attempting to blackmail reddit. There’s no proof of such attempted blackmail and reddit has harmed his potential to develop professionally for corporations in the future… blah blah blah.” Then, in this hypothetical case, the burden of proof would be on reddit/Stevie boy to prove that Christian, the dev, had attempted to blackmail reddit and they’d have to show something or provide something in someway as to prove that. Like emails, phone calls, tweets, something. It’s actually kinda funny because like you COULD attempt to blackmail someone but if no proof of that exists, and the target complains and openly defames you by saying “he’s a bad person and he tried it!” You could actually then sue them for defamation and possibly win. The burden of proof in the US (or whatever the wording is there) for being liable for civil offenses is only a “preponderance of the evidence.” I’ve watched an unfortunate amount of lawyers talk about it, also unfortunately friends with a couple, and had it explained that this means basically “51% or more chance that this happened based on the evidence then the person is liable.” As opposed of course to criminal cases, which defamation is not, where the standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt” which basically means without making up insane scenarios and hypothetical a normal person would see this evidence and conclude like 99% that the suspect committed the crime. There can be some doubt remaining, but all reasonable doubt (logical scenarios and shit) is eliminated basically. The standard for civil is pretty low in this way, honestly. If Christian provides the spez comments about him the court would say “why did you make these comments mr. Spez moron guy?” And at that point he has to provide a real reason. Saying he felt blackmailed or “it just was” wouldn’t cut it, I don’t think. Obviously corruption exists and such, but honestly, unless spezy moron kid actually has some message or email from Christian he probably would win some case if he bothered. I have no idea what the damages would be. Probably not much. Probably not worth it besides annoying spez which would be pretty funny.
In the united states as far as I understand federal law says all you need is one party consent so as long as one person on the call consents to being recorded it's fully allowed. Unless you aren't part of the conversation it would be fully legal and allowed to be evidence. I'm not super familiar with this blackmail case but majority of the states and federally it would be completely legal to record conversations and use them in court as long as one person consented to recording