It seems that Abel was part of Patch and Tim Armstrong is CEO of AOL. This second call was from some time last year and not related to the OPs link other than it's the same set of companies, and another dubious action made on a conference call.

I see that, let me rephrase: was abel being fired anyway, or was he literally fired for the impudence of taking a photo?

I guess it must be the latter, or the clip wouldn't be so interesting.

I don't think anyone is debating whether taking a photo during a serious meeting is a good idea

It's wrong to unnecessarily fire someone in front of their colleagues. It destroys morale and it's essentially a form of public humiliation. A better response would have been to ask to put the camera away and remind people it's a serious meeting.

But testosterone.

He was on a call about not leaking information related to Patch and was using/playing with a camera while Tim Armstrong was speaking on the topic.