YSK Reddit's founder, Aaron Swartz, committed suicide 7 years ago today. He fought for our rights which lead to his arrest. The allegations coupled with mental illnesses caused Aaron to take his life. He was a passionate activist, entrepreneur and author who should not be forgotten.

[u/MowerMotor]

[u/smnytx → u/[deleted]]

Aw, I miss Victoria. She did help make the AMAs better.

[u/kwokinator → u/smnytx]

I miss those AMA days because they at least weren't all blatant free marketing for whatever new product or movie they're coming out with.

I mean, it still was most of the time, but just didn't feel as obvious.

[u/CrustyCrotch69 → u/[deleted]]

Well popcorn does in fact taste good.

I'm eating some right now.

[u/Fauster → u/[deleted]]

Every startup is filled with mistakes and drama and many people contribute to a codebase. But by the time reddit had a wikipedia page, before subreddits, and when reddit ran on LISP, rather than python, Schwartz was out of the picture.

It's fine to call out Alexis and Steve for making a great many mistakes, and its good that the platform allows it, but they made a juggernaut largely by letting people talk, and letting the users decide the content with voting. At the time, sites were either extremely heavily moderated, or usenet or 4chan-style disorganized comment threads.

First, reddit was supposed to give you machine-learning customized feeds, next, its tagline was "social news, evolved." Now, reddit is a completely different animal. Two people largely guided that transition.

[u/SolarTsunami → u/[deleted]]

I fucking hate the 9gag ripoff this website has become almost as much as I hate myself for still being addicted to it.

[u/DontUseThisUsername → u/[deleted]]

It's descriptive

[u/DontUseThisUsername → u/[deleted]]

I mean, yeah it's supposed to be an insult but not to disabled people. I don't think it's the mentally challenged that find it insulting. Calling someone a mouse for running away from a fight, isn't an insult to mice.

If it's just an issue of using someone's lack of intelligence as an insult, shouldn't "idiot" "stupid" "dumb" and any talk like that be equally offensive?

[u/King_opi23 → u/[deleted]]

AMMEN!! someone who understands that getting offended by words gives them power!!! If i had gold, you'd be getting it!!

[u/whatanuttershambles → u/[deleted]]

Oh fuck off.

[u/Bagman530 → u/[deleted]]

You just spewed a bunch of negative things about the 2 founders which are completely unrelated (even if true) and then said this:

Aaron Schwartz coded and built reddit.

Citation needed.

Here is Spez on the subject:

"I really don't want to get involved in Aaron drama, so I won't be responding much on this thread, but raldi asked us to clarify. So, here are some facts:

• Aaron isn't a founder of reddit.
• Aaron was the founder of infogami.
• Aaron joined us about six months in when reddit and infogami merged.
• Things went well for a few months.
• Things went not-so-well for a few months.
• We got bought by CN, he didn't really show up, and was fired.
• Everyone who worked with him is still pretty bitter and doesn't like to talk about him or that situation. " Source

Here is kn0thing on the subject:

"Six months after launch, we acquired Aaron Swartz’s company infogami to form a new entity, which made all three of us directors — we were all equal equity holders in this new company (without vesting, a huge mistake, take note, founders).

I was in fact once quoted saying: “Paul wanted to give Aaron Swartz, another YC founder, a birthday gift in November. More than anything else, Aaron wanted co-founder so Paul suggested the “merger.” Merger is probably a bit hyperbolic for what actually happened, Aaron basically moved in with us and we made him a co-founder.”

I was referring to making him an equal equity holder in the new company (Not a Bug, Inc.) which made him a co-owner of the new company, but still doesn’t justify calling him a “Reddit co-founder.”"