Sine_Fine_BelliAaron is no longer considered as cofounder by reddit. He fought for free speech.
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.
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.
breadsmasherYour link isn’t working for me
It's a link to an archive of his http://bits.are.notabug.com site on the wayback machine as his site is no longer online. It's working for me on my PC and my phone. I can take a screenshot and share it if your browser is unable to load the wayback machine?
Having lived some life, I can say that a righteous act is not always the one that most people think about, because the opinion of most people can be changed in a way that other, more popular and influential people want.
You're gonna have to dumb it down for me as I'm not sure what you mean by this in relation to this discussion.
I don’t think you get my point.
Yes that's what I why I asked you to state more simply for me.
They said that they don’t. That’s why they want you to explain it better.
He is saying that CP is illegal because it’s unpopular, not because “it’s the right thing to do.” So, if CP becomes popular in the future, then in totes be fine.
Which is a fucking disgusting thing to say in 2023.
I think my explanation was exhaustive, but yes, that’s right… This applies not only to cp, the same “popular” people did not like Aaron, and it would be beneficial for them to have someone criticize Schwartz, the usual psychology is to expose a person in a bad light, telling only about his misdeeds. Some even pay for it.
You can use periods yknow?
Comments can be multiple sentences. It makes it easier to grok
Well, of course. You can cure cancer, but if you fuck kids, then people will remember you as the kid fucker. I don’t see how that’s a problem.
How about the millions of kids you cured of cancer that will live?
If you are a pediatric oncologist (someone curing kids of cancer) then you are in a position to have access to many children. If you are also a pedo, then you are also sexually assaulting a subset of them, which makes the difference between the subset and the whole set of zero importance.
If this is too puzzling for you, Larry Nassar has a lot of time on his hands these days, and might be willing to tell you about how he sees the difference between the underage gymnasts he simply coached in contrast to the smaller subset of underage gymnasts he coached AND sexually assaulted.
I meant scientist which could cure overall, some cancer is incurable currently, only delayable.
no, people will only remember you as a kid fucker if you are poor, rich people just spend money on C&D + PR campaign, and watch how owning slaves and CP is washed out of public consciousness…
Like Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrews?
you can’t well do it when you’re dead, and the other barely finished in 2022.
how about: Bryan Singer, Nathan Manrow, Dennis Hastert, R. Kelly, Curtis Johnson, Samantha Bouvier, etc…
and the best part? I just tossed in a few names that you don’t really know, and some of these are in the 40+different children numbers.
Well either that or he’s advocating for the violent overthrow of the government on a platform that’s way less privacy focused than even reddit.
Either way a major league L.
Run on, sentences make very, hard for others to understand the, point you’re trying, to make.
theodewerei heard that Ohanian and Huffman have people out there trying to suggest that he was a pedo or some shit, what about that
I'd say you can read Aaron's own defense of child porn on his website and draw your own conclusions. If you're trying to suggest that I'm somehow defending Ohanian and Huffman, far from it. I can think Swartz shouldn't be considered a modern folk hero and still not like the other two.
Huffman was a mod for the jailbait subreddit.
Here's an interview with Ohanian after CNN reported on the jailbait subreddit which caused Reddit to close it down. Alexis blames CNN for "making up jibber jabber" and the children who allowed images of their abuse to be posted online.
This type of view was apparently support by all the original Reddit folks, just because Swartz has a better reputation now doesn't mean he didn't also share those views.
Reddit.com co-Founder Alexis Ohanian fires back at CNN and Anderson Cooper
i really don't give half a shit about any of them, they have their heads so far up their asses
I thought the mod thing was because you used to be able to be modded for a subreddit without your approval
He was 16 years old when he posted this. The statement is disgusting and not really defensable by itself, but I wonder if this was a dumb naive teenage take, or if he still thought this way up until he died.
I also don’t know if he was actually a pedophile, or if he just thought freedom of information on the web should be taken to the extreme. I would lean towards the latter since he seemed to have a relationship with an older woman at somr point, but I don’t think I will ever truly know for sure.
That archive date I linked is from shortly after his death. If you go through the various archive dates you can see that he made changes to the page over the years. He added the bit about wanting a violent overthrow of the government when he was 18 or 19. In 2007 when he would have been 21, the archive just shows a note that he had a server crash and the site is gone but you can email him if you want a copy of it. By the time he was 22 he'd put the site back online. He made more edits visible through the following years until his death. So yeah we don't know his thoughts but we do he continued to maintain that page, even choosing to restore it after a server crash, until the point he killed himself. It's not as though it's an online post he made as a kid and forgot about.
Thank you for the clarification there. I was not aware of the history of that cringey page. I had no idea that he kept it up and running like that.
The statement is disgusting and not really defensable by itself
I hate it when this happens. Why do feelings always play into this discussion? “The statement is disgusting”, is not an argument, and should never be part of any discussion.
No matter how disgusted a statement might make you feel, if it has a good argument behind it, it should be regarded as true.
I agree that the argument doesn’t quite work. And that’s that.
I just more meant that it makes me feel gross. I imagine many people feel the same. I guess the statement itself isn’t disgusting, but what it is advocating for is. On the other hand,
the argument doesn’t quite work.
is putting it a bit lightly, in my opinion, because pedophilia is a generally despised act.
These two run a rigged company plagued with censorship that over the years collaborated with all sort of scum including the chinese government. I really wouldn’t trust what they have to say
Oh…oh no
genoxidedev1What. 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.
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.
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.
He didn’t hang himself because of child porn. He hung himself because he was facing life in prison for downloading some journal articles. The government was trying to make an example out of him.
Actually he was facing 6 months on a plea deal but refused as he wouldn’t accept that he commited felonies. Then he killed himself rather than do his time.
squibletYeah, it wasn’t mandatory that he had to kill himself. It’s absurd that the gov’t was prosecuting him, and fuck scientific journals, but even if he served some time in prison… other people do that and, you know, get out of prison eventually.
But you have no problem creating judgement about the guy without knowing anything about him.
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.
No, you and I are different. I for example read not only what he wrote (when he was a 16 yo kid) but I also read the article that he linked to which provided more information about why he said what he said.
You are making wild judgements off of what amounts to a headline.
No, you and I are different. I read what a 16 year old kid wrote AND I read the article that he linked to that explains why he was saying what he said.
You are basing your entire view of an adult based on what they wrote as a kid, without reading further to see why they had that opinion at the time. And you’re completely fine judging them that way.
exscapeHe 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.
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.
Action I mean, he’s dead, so bit late for that.
He’s dead
entropicshartFYI your link is broken and is just leading to the archive home page
Sorry I'm brand new here. The link I put is https://web.archive.org/web/20130116210225/http://bits.are.notabug.com/ which loads an archived copy of his homepage as it's no longer online since his death. The link loads properly for me on all my devices, even when i click it from my comment. Did I perhaps format the link incorrectly here and that's why it's not working? I know it's a bit of an odd url format that the wayback machine uses.
Still not formatted correctly on memmy. Let’s see if this works…
AlexisFRI mean, he was still a man unstable enough to end up killing himself, so it’s not entirely surprising.
ORbituaryYou don’t understand suicide or depression. You’re making a grossly crass statement, no matter what the man may have done in life.
HeavenAndHellIn the US, it is illegal to possess or distribute child pornography, apparently because doing so will encourage people to sexually abuse children.
This is absurd logic. Child pornography is not necessarily abuse. Even if it was, preventing the distribution or posession of the evidence won’t make the abuse go away. We don’t arrest everyone with videotapes of murders, or make it illegal for TV stations to show people being killed.
I don’t know if that’s the reason CP is actually banned, but his logic is even worse and dumber by a mile.
jballsChild pornography is not necessarily abuse.
What the fuck. How is this guy a CEO and not publicly shunned?
He’s dead. That’s why
He’s dead. That’s why
Smarf DurdenHe’s dead
Flat Pluto SocietyThis is a quote from Aaron Swartz, a guy who (kinda sorta) co-founded Reddit, not the current CEO. Swartz has been dead for ten years and never had any leadership position with Reddit.
I mean, the article linked in that page (albeit horribly long due to useless info) does raise a point against current laws on viewing illegal material.
But sharing it? Yeah that’s a bit of a stretch. Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.
Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.
That particular argument doesn’t hold water. We don’t generally subscribe to this kind of argument.
The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal.
CP is likely to inspire some people toward child abuse. Child abuse is illegal. Thus the distribution of CP should be illegal.
We don’t do this anywhere else.
Descriptions of non consesnual violence are likely to inspire some people toward non consensual violence. Non consensual violence is illegal. Thus the distribution of all descriptions of non consensual violence should be illegal.
If we take this seriously, we have to ban action movies. And I am not even getting into the whole porn debate…
No, the only valid reason for banning the distribution of child porn which I can think of, lies in the rights of the victims. The victims were abused, and their image was used without their consent. Without them even possibly being able to give consent to any of that, or the distribution that follows.
So anyone who shares child porn, is guaranteed to share a piece of media which shows someone being subjected to a crime, while they couldn’t possibly give consent for that to be recorded, or shared publicly. Making it illegal to share someone being a victim of a crime, without them being able to consent to that being shared, is a reasoning which has far fewer problems than what you propose here.
You raise a few valid points, but the problem with the action film thing is that it is fiction, and thus protected by free speech rights.
That’s actually the main argument against lolicon being illegal: depictions of other crimes, including heinous ones like murder and rape, are not illegal.
Ultimately it comes down to inconsistency in the law, and sensationalism makes it very difficult to discuss rationally.
The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal
To me it’s more like “All situations where committing illegal actions could bring a positive feedback to the perpetrator should be avoided”.
Allowing CP to be shared, and thus sold/hosted on for-profit sites creates a market for it, and makes abusing children an actual profession. That’s not ok and already a talking point against the current, legal, porn industry.
that line of reasoning sort of assumes that there can’t be a market for illegal things, something anyone should be able to realize is fundamentally untrue, examples; Drugs, Firearms, the very CP we are talking about, rape porn, snuff porn, etc… they all have markets even tho they are completely or partially (like the firearms, with only some falling into the category) illegal