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.

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.

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.