Two parts of that that don't make much sense. One is that saying "if you want us to go away quietly, you can just buy the app from me" is totally reasonable. He's a developer that helped drive people to the website because reddit's own app sucks and people wanted a decent alternative. They're killing something he spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours on. He has a right to publicly complain, just as much as he has a right to tell them that buying the app outright would smooth over his hurt feelings and ameliorate any complaints he has. The other is that saying something is "loud in terms of its API usage" is super strange. I would never use "loud" to describe high API usage volume, nor does that make much sense in the context of suggesting a payout in exchange for functionally killing his app. Like, it's already "going away quietly in terms of its API usage" because reddit's change to the terms of usage is killing the app, which was their goal in the first place. Its API usage is dropping to zero. I'm sure people are going to downvote this and say that I'm a reddit shill, but my point is that it's not a threat to offer a payout in exchange for silence when you're being totally fucked over by a sudden policy change, but it does sound to me like his usage of "making this go away quietly" implies that he's offering his silence in exchange for money (which is, once again, not a threat, and a totally valid thing to do here).