• thesmokingman@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Swartz wasn’t involved in the origins of Reddit. He got involved when Y Combinator combined his company with Reddit (something along those lines?). He was not an actual founder, just an early influencer. In many ways, decoupling him from the shitshow that Ohanian and Huffman have engendered is a good thing.

    This is very similar to the argument of Musk being a founder of Tesla.

    • Gramba@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Also Swartz had a section of his homepage defending child pornography as “not necessarily abuse” and that possession & distribution of it should be a first amendment right. He also advocated for a violent overthrow of the US government. Here’s a cache of one instance of him defending it. Aaron did some really great tech stuff, but he’s not a person that should be regarded as some hero as he had a lot of views that were misguided at best.

      • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        What. The actual. Fuck. This guy is comparing peas to pies.

        Imagine wanting to legalize that shit because “We don’t arrest everyone with videotapes of murders, or make it illegal for TV stations to show people being killed.”. Can’t he imagine what would happen if we legalized that shit?

        I think someone needs to get their hard drives examined.

        • Gramba@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The feds did come after him for other computer crimes (unrelated to those views) and he hung himself and investigation into him stopped at that point.

          • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Eh, didn’t know the full story behind him (or even that he hung himself for that matter).

            I’m not gonna pretend to have sympathy for him if he was guilty of possessing the stuff that he was advocating for.

            • exscape@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              He was a big fan of freedom of speech of all kinds. That doesn’t in any way suggest he possessed child porn. Read the entire page and it becomes quite clear that he is literally just listing laws that make certain kinds of data illegal.

              I strongly disagree that CSAM should be legal, but the point that honest people have their lives ruined by being accused of possessing it, or by having normal images of their children, is certainly true.

              • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                If you defend that shit in ANY way I’m gonna raise some eyebrows way up.

                I do not care if it’s to defend “free speech”, there’s WAY better ways to be an advocate for “any” free speech that don’t include advocating for murder, hate speech or in this case CP.

                “Child pornography is not necessarily abuse.”, sure buddy.

                “Even if it was, preventing the distribution or posession of the evidence won’t make the abuse go away.”, yeah the typical “stricter gun laws won’t make mass shootings go away” excuse. Of course, but legalizing it would only make it way worse.

            • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              But you have no problem creating judgement about the guy without knowing anything about him.

              • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                I read what he posted on his website. I know enough to make that judgement. I know me AND you would have said the exact same thing about everyone else that posted that shit on their website.

      • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        That website has been the same since it’s first archive on 2002-12-17. Aaron Swartz had just turned 16 a month earlier. I know I had some seriously immature opinions at that age. As well, that website was still up as of this January, a decade since his passing. http://www.aaronsw.com/ is also still up, and it doesn’t look like it was updated since 2002 either. Neither is any of this referenced on his wikipedia page, nor on it’s talk page. This feels like such a reach…

    • Tmiwi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.