This disgusts me.
Aaron Is one of my heroes. He died standing up for something he believed in.
His name and a photo of him are right there on that page as a founder though.
You’re disgusted because someone didn’t draw him as a cartoon?
This is an example of revisionist history on the part of the ‘founders’ of reddit.
Is it though? Please tell exactly how.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/1674832
It smells like he was more involved than Steve Huffman makes him out to be.
Now don’t get me wrong, we might never know, but I know that from here on out we shouldn’t trust anyone who is spinning his legacy in any direction. And Reddit is doing exactly that currently.
Aaron referred to himself as a founding partner, and in a reddit AMA, he was asked why he called himself a founder, and he explained how the two companies were merged together and he became a founding partner. He offered Steve Huffman to stop referring to himself as a founding partner at Steve’s request. Steve never challenged Aaron’s claim while he was alive.
Top half is a google search, the bottom is the Reddit website. Notice how the official website says “created by two friends.”
Because Reddit was created by two people.
Aaron was not involved in the starting of Reddit whatsoever. He didn’t come on board until Ycombinator basically forced a merge between Reddit and Infogami 6 months after Reddit launched.
And he was fired within a year.
Man, you people need to put the rage aside and actually read things other than posts.
Between November 2005 and January 2006, Reddit merged with Aaron Swartz’s company Infogami, and Swartz became an equal owner of the resulting parent company, Not A Bug.[36][37] Ohanian later wrote that instead of labeling Swartz as a co-founder, the correct description is that Swartz’s company was acquired by Reddit 6 months after he and Huffman had started.[38]
Here is a link to what reference 38 since it didn’t get included
https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/93374221685755904?s=20
ATTN @nytimes Steve Huffman & I founded @reddit . We acquired Aaron Swartz’s company infogami 6mos after we launched.
Acquired implies that they purchased infogami, when in reality they were merged into a new company by ycombinator, which made Aaron a founding partner… When reddit was bought by conde nast, his ownership was paid, and he became an employee, but he didn’t like working for conde nast, so he basically got himself fired.
It seems like a philosophical question for you then. Do you consider Elon Musk a founder of Tesla? Similar thing, he was not part of it during the founding technically. I’m trusting the primary source of that tweet I linked.
Was it really ‘acquired’ as much as ‘directed to be merged by Ycombinator investors’? Seems fair to add him as a co-founder since the merger became a new organziation “Not a Bug”, and without him the site wouldn’t exist in a state that allowed it grow quickly when the time came for Not a Bug to get bought out by Conde Nast in 2006…
Reddit the website already existed at that time though.
I believe that Aaron stood up and didn’t grab ankle when confronted with overwhelming force sent from his intellectual and moral inferiors.
But being short on days to make eternity just we all have a crumple point. And the government’s executive branches have found crumpling to be so very easy to do.
Yeah, but he also believed that child porn should be legal to distribute, so can’t say he’s my hero even though I respect a lot of his other views.
Imagine if we got him to join Lemmy’s side
Edit: oh shit I didn’t know it, RIP
You can’t. Aaron is dead. He killed himself while he being blindsided by the courts for downloading journals and educational materials that were being kept behind paid walls.
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F
He would have thought the entire fediverse thing was fantastic.
The dude said died
u/spez is a complete and utter piece of shit
This is true but also old news from what I remember they took him off that page a long time ago. Reddit has been heading toward it’s inevitable demise ever since Aaron passed. Glad I finally left for good.
Wait. Back up.
I haven’t been embroiled in the drama that is Reddit and it’s founding… But the “c-level” guy that was basically the free speech advocate of the admin team… Died?
This explains a lot actually.
he died in 2013. his involvement with reddit ended officially in 2007, but even by his own admission he stopped any involvement with the company when it was acquired by conde nast - he was part of reddit for less than a year.
his death really doesn’t have anything to do with reddit’s current trajectory
That’s good to know; even if he hadn’t died; he still wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. May he rest in peace.
Yeah he was arrested for downloading a massive amount of documents/articles off JSTOR with a computer hidden in an on-campus closet. He ended up committing suicide before going to trial for it
I guarantee to you that there is not a SINGLE researcher that doesn’t use scihub to get articles. This is so fucking unfair, I had no idea his death was due to this
He hung himself after being prosecuted by the federal authorities for academic journal article piracy. He was trying to make journal articles available to the masses and was facing life in prison for it. This was many years ago.
He died for what he believed in, I suppose. I wonder if Richard Stallman had any comment on it, since he’s kind of the OG digital freedom of information guy.
You could email him and ask. I’ve heard he answers a lot of the emails random people send
I could. I’m sure he’s doing far more important work for the freedom of information, I wouldn’t want to distract him from that important work.
Also I’m sure I could come up with something far more interesting to ask if I did.
He was too good for this world.
He also defended child porn and advocated for making it legal.
Maybe don’t idolize people.
Wasn’t he like 16 years old when he posted that? I certainly said some pretty stupid stuff when I was that age.
There’s saying stupid things as a teenager, and then there’s defending child porn.
I’ve said a lot of stupid stuff as a teenager too but never felt like saying child porn should be legal or that it wasn’t abuse. That’s something that you should know by 16.
What a world we live in
It’s absolutely insane.
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I cant give you flack for asking, because unlike others, you asked in a nice way
I am supporting this new format , still learning, and did not realize it was reddit.
Because this specific Lemmy community is “reddit”
If you don’t want to hear about it, I suggest you block the reddit Lemmy community.
have college friends too. idiots
Lol what?
RIP Aaron
Nobody cares about u/spez !
Fuck Spez
It should have been spez
Please God, give us Aaron Schwartz back and take Spez. Thanks!
Ok. Now that is truly fucked up. Someone needs to check in on that fucker, he’s not mentally healthy.
Obligatory FUCK SPEZ.
He’s a cunt.
That dude was great, he helped contribute to RSS as well. RIP
And Creative Commons. And SOPA. And WIkiLeaks. He was an Open Access civil servant in its true form.
Fuck spez.
At the End of the day: The greedy man’s gonna have nothing, literally nothing. For Aaron his legacy will continue.
We can hope, but if Facebook adn Microsoft taught us anything, is that the greedy man will keep fuckloads of cash
They’ll get theirs eventually, imho. Maybe not this go around, but it’ll happen. Always does.
Maybe.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
Fuck loads of cash but nothing to show for it.
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Fuck spez… But where is Alexis on all of this? Does he comment, or just cashes the checks now?
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