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.

In 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.

Child pornography is not necessarily abuse.

What the fuck. How is this guy a CEO and not publicly shunned?