I'm weighing an offer from Apple
So it's a complicated situation but I want to keep everyone in the loop. Bottom line is I've received an overture from the Mothership with a mention of a Think Secret type settlement if I'll stop impersonating Dear Leader on the Web.
Context & Ripple Effects
The overture lands one day after Apple's confirmed settlement with Think Secret shut the tip site down, ending a legal fight that erupted in January 2005 when the site pre-empted the Mac Mini unveiling. Fake Steve Jobs now claims the Mothership has floated the same deal for him: Think Secret-style money in exchange for ending the impersonation.
Skeptics should note the claim's status — it is an unconfirmed report on a satirical blog, published the same day as his own blogger amnesty program announcement, and Publishing 2.0's read at the time was that the entire shutdown drama was faked by FSJ himself. The July 2007 unmasking hunt (On the trail of Fake Steve Jobs) already established that his anonymity was the story's pressure point, which is exactly what a settlement-for-silence would target.
First-order effects
- FSJ faces the same choice Nick dePlume just took: cash in exchange for ending a site whose entire premise — impersonating Dear Leader — is what Apple wants gone, meaning acceptance dissolves the blog itself.
- His follow-up framing, 'first carrot, now stick,' signals that declining the payment invites the litigation route Apple just used against Think Secret.
Second-order effects
- Other independent Apple commentators and parody writers now have to price in the possibility that Apple will buy out critics rather than sue them, extending the settlement template beyond leak sites to satire and opinion.
- Apple gains a quieter reputational tool than courtroom battles it has mixed results with — every blogger weighing coverage of the company must factor a private buyout offer into the calculus.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, corporate legal teams normalize paid silence as standard reputation management, thinning the independent layer of commentary that sits between a company's PR and mainstream press coverage.
- The line between journalism, satire, and trade secret litigation blurs further, with settlements — not court rulings — becoming the mechanism that defines who may write about a company and how.
The trend: Apple's dispute playbook is expanding from suing leakers to paying critics to disappear, with satirists and commentators the newest targets of the settlement-for-silence model.