The author doesn't want to look at it this way, but this is a really weird thing to say. My interpretation was that they'd make an offer to sell the app to redd

The author doesn't want to look at it this way, but this is a really weird thing to say. My interpretation was that they'd make an offer to sell the app to reddit, but the specific phrasing there really is not that. edit: I still think it was the wrong way to approach the situation. Consider this from reddit's perspective, it would only make sense for Reddit to pay for the traffic if they think they would lose it if it Apollo went away, but then it's not opportunity cost. It doesn't make the change any better of a look for reddit, and you can certainly question whether it's true that Apollo users would just use reddit, but if you accept that then I don't think you can claim the moral high ground if you offer to accept payment to "make it go away". The developer should have approached this from the perspective of the value that Apollo offers users and reddit instead of the cost to make the problem go away. I imagine the dev doesn't accept that Apollo users would just switch over, but they shouldn't have made their statement in those terms then, and I think that was a mistake.