• density@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    the impression I got from that documentary about him was that he was quite ambivalent about reddit and had nothing to do with starting it. he was declared co founder in some symbolic way after the fact. IIRC his arm was twisted in some business deal and he didn’t take any satisfaction from it. he immediately set about actively doing everything he could think of to make himself annoying in the hopes of being released from the obligation.

    Is this wrong? If I am on the right track, I think it’s kind of shitty to use the memory of a dead person who really did some good things to make a point about how scuzzy reddit is. Which we are all quite aware of. Reddit sucks case closed. IMHO it would be worse if they put his picture on every page and talked about him all the time. Reddit should keep his out of its mouth.

    Aaron Schwartz did a bunch of cool things and reddit wasn’t one of them. He helped develop RSS which unlike reddit we all still love when he was like 14. He made a browser extension to automatically share public domain legal documents the state was hoarding for money. And he set up a laptop in a closet at MIT to download all of JSTOR one article at a time because that shit belongs to all humanity. Among other things. Please have some respect for this person and stop belittling him in this way.