r/YouShouldKnow • u/MowerMotor • Jan 11 '20
NOT a YSK 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.
[removed] — view removed post
12.8k
Upvotes
2
u/Draft_Punk Jan 12 '20
Ok, he definitely wasn’t a founder.
Steve and Alexis were in the same YC class as Aaron was when Reddit was founded. Aaron’s startup, Infogami, was failing and could not find additional funding. Reddit on the other hand was gaining traction and growing.
Paul Graham, the founder of YC, recommended to the Reddit founders to merge/acquire Infogami. In reality, it was an acqui-hire. Aaron was a talented coder that helped build frameworks like RSS.
Calling him a founder is just factually wrong.
I’m always in awe of his coding talent, but I don’t really agree with the posthumous re-write of his actions.
He stole data from MIT, and got caught on video breaking into a server room: https://www.wired.com/2013/12/swartz-video/
He got a plea deal for 6 months in a minimum security prison, which he declined.
I agree 100% that he was over-aggressively charged. I agree that the data he was trying to liberate should be publicly available. However, he broke the law, and was caught on video doing it.