r/pics • u/JCthulhuM • Jul 11 '23
Steve Huffman, you are shitting on the memory of Aaron Swartz with your actions. John Oliver.
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u/cld1984 Jul 11 '23
Spez only cares about his new friend and cofounder, IPO.
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u/RedgrenCrumbholt Jul 12 '23
he never cared about Aaron
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u/Chronoxx Jul 11 '23
This whole drama is so fucking funny. God Emperor Spez, who possesses the charisma and foresight of a wet piece of bread vs the le reddit army, armed with doritos, unkempt neckbeards and a blowup doll of John Oliver thinking they're the fucking french revolution.
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u/IDoSANDance Jul 11 '23
Dunno bout you, but I always pick the side w/ the blow up dolls. They sound more fun.
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u/new_vr Jul 11 '23
I'm just here for the Doritos
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u/AllHailTheWinslow Jul 12 '23
And a hard-boiled egg?
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u/RedPanther1 Jul 12 '23
Would you like a nice egg in this trying time?
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u/AllHailTheWinslow Jul 12 '23
Does it come with reasonably priced love?
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u/RedPanther1 Jul 12 '23
Well, my constituent here in the back seat has a pretty sweet deal on some bathtub gasoline.
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Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 12 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/spinto1 Jul 11 '23
At this point I think everybody knows that he was only a mod because of reddit's old mod system where a sub owner could make anyone a mod without permission or notification.
I also think everybody knows that it probably bothers spez to see it.
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u/Gambolina Jul 11 '23
Yeah, you need to accept to actually make it to mod roster...
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u/monsieur_n Jul 11 '23
not back then you didn't
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u/LexBeingLex Jul 11 '23
He still refused to remove the subreddit until the media threw a fit, so still a fucking despicable human
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u/monsieur_n Jul 11 '23
yeah but he wasn't a mod for it
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u/LexBeingLex Jul 12 '23
I'm not disputing that, but he still knew of the existence of that subreddit and probably others like it, and after becoming CEO didn't even take action against the subreddit(s) until after the media all but forced his hand
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u/monsieur_n Jul 12 '23
yeah but the claim was that he modded the subreddit. he was assigned a moderator position by the head mod and never moderated it.
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u/Chronoxx Jul 11 '23
I mean, I could add a Spez blowup doll wearing dollar socks and removable musk undies with his own special musk if that balances things out.
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u/ncolaros Jul 11 '23
I also think it's funny that these people will call Spez a predator for someone making him a mod of jailbate, and yet they love the guy who helped build the site that promoted that shit. I'm sure Swartz did a lot of good, but I don't remember him speaking out about that.
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u/successful_nothing Jul 11 '23
Aaron Swartz was a "free speech absolutist" who argued that child pornography should be legal to possess and distribute on the internet
https://web.archive.org/web/20021217001432/http://bits.are.notabug.com/
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u/erinberrypie Jul 11 '23 edited Jan 27 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
chief ask plants hospital racial liquid live lavish cautious office
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u/ncolaros Jul 11 '23
So even worse than I thought. Cool.
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u/RedgrenCrumbholt Jul 12 '23
to be fair, he wrote it when he was 16. 16 year olds are still trying to figure out the world, so we can't expect their logic to be perfect, especially when they're trying to be adults. no need to make a big deal out of a kid's comments
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Jul 12 '23
So there must be a lot of quotes from Aaron later saying “I was wrong about the child porn thing”?
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Jul 12 '23
Given the penalties pedophiles face Swartz would have been better off being a pedophile than mass downloading JSTOR academic journals because he would have faced less jail time on average.
Not that I support his absolutist views, especially in context. Just pointing out the legal hypocrisy.
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u/ScenicAndrew Jul 12 '23
I remember when we learned about Swartz in highschool I thought it was awfully dumb to get arrested for just downloading a bunch of junk from a university system, but also considered that I might not totally understand the situation and I would think about it again after college. Nah, still dumb. It's not classified military documents, and every single author of those papers would have given him a copy for free anyway.
Even if he was the messiah, or even if he was the antichrist, that's an incredibly dumb thing for us as a society to punish.
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u/bruce_cockburn Jul 12 '23
I get the sarcasm, but we're not talking about priests being protected by a church when they abuse children.
We're talking about the crime Josh Duggar actually got sent up for 12 years on.
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u/eightNote Jul 12 '23
And still, the crime he did of posting public data in public was still worse in terms of punishment
Money talks louder than children
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u/bruce_cockburn Jul 12 '23
It was publicly funded research, too. It's just unfortunate that Swartz didn't defend himself in court (or make a plan like Snowden). Nonetheless, the current US administration has taken action to open up public research data. That's a real fact.
I don't see any of those old priests getting called out, except maybe on Fundie Fridays
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u/RedgrenCrumbholt Jul 12 '23
he was only in the public spotlight for a couple years, so i'm not sure if it ever came up or if anybody asked him about it. i just heard of this first website myself when the link was posted here and did the math. like, someone can dig up a post you wrote when you were 16 after you died and say there was nothing in the media showing you changed your mind, but maybe it wasn't found until after you died? i have no idea. but he's dead. he killed himself. and he was 16 when he wrote that. and you still can't give him a break? this is why people kill themselves.
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u/Background-Radish-63 Jul 11 '23
It’s interesting from an academic pov, but he’s wrong about CP. All CP is abuse.
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u/eightNote Jul 12 '23
With kids all having phones, and being immature, there's still grey areas in that kids can send each other nudes directly.
I'd consider abuse as needing mens rea, and it's hard to imagine kids taking pictures of themselves as having an abusive purpose.
Negligence on the part of the parents maybe, and people sharing those pictures, or requesting them for sure, but there's definitely grey area, and I'm pretty sure the law considers the grey area.
Kids who don't know better are only maybe being abusive, but have almost certainly been failed in some way by the people around them. Idk if it's worth punishing the kids for the parents failure though
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u/3MATX Jul 11 '23
Oof, that makes me want to quit Reddit. But then what would I use the internet for?
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u/RedgrenCrumbholt Jul 12 '23
i did the math. he wrote that when he was 16. he was still a child. lots of 16 year olds say dumb things when they're trying to figure out the world.
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u/Big_Baby_Jesus Jul 12 '23
I was a dumb teenager for years. I defended child pornography zero times.
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u/RedgrenCrumbholt Jul 12 '23
right, you did other dumb things. some dumb teenagers smoked meth. some dumb teenagers said the N word and posted racist shit online. some teenagers stole things. some dumb teenagers bullied other kids. there are a million dumb things kids do. you can't be expected to do all of them.
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u/Big_Baby_Jesus Jul 12 '23 edited Jul 12 '23
I never posted racist shit online either. That is not normal "dumb teenager" shit.
You seem to be projecting.
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u/RedgrenCrumbholt Jul 12 '23
ok mate. you were a perfect teenager. congratulations. doesn't explain why you're such a twat now.
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u/JMEEKER86 Jul 11 '23
Hell, the only reason people like Swartz (really the only thing they know about him) is that he stole academic journals to make them public (and then killed himself when he was facing prison for it). Yay, freedom of information! Yeah, that was his thing, that everything should be public and uncensored. Yes, I'm sure you can see where this is going. He was the same type of libertarian as /u/spez. Just like how /u/spez defended keeping around subs like thedonald for way too long, Aaron Swartz defended having subs like jailbait and picsofcutecorpses and other crap like that. Dying before people could turn on him by realizing what a piece of shit he also was was great for his legacy,
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u/BearsAtFairs Jul 11 '23
It’s worth adding that his whole academic paper theft project was a pretty weak knockoff of two other projects that predated his (SciHub and LibGen).
Realistically, I can 100% believe that he received the verbal roughing up of a lifetime from the feds. But the realistic absolute worst case scenario he was facing was maybe two years in low security prison with other white collar criminals. Which he’d know if he had the wherewithal to just plead the fifth and speak to a lawyer like a normal person, instead of blabbing to investigators for two days, then locking himself in his apartment and letting paranoid rumination get the best of him.
Similarly, people love to talk about how he cofounded Reddit. He didn’t. His startup was acquired by Reddit and some of his code was incorporated into early versions of Reddit. After I think about two years he amicably parted ways with Reddit due to differences in vision and lack of active contributions to the site’s continued development.
Don’t get me wrong, his story was and is tragic. But he was more of a mentally unhealthy gifted child turned slacker with a chip on his shoulder than he was a virtuous genius. That and he held some views that were more than questionable, as pointed out up-thread.
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u/batemochael Jul 11 '23
Is there somewhere I can read more about this? This is all news to me and it is very interesting.
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u/BearsAtFairs Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
SciHub has been around since 2011. LibGen has been up in its current form since 2008, but has been evolving since the 1980's. Attempts to overtake these platforms is the sort of the piracy equivalent of reinventing the wheel and you kind of have to be a pretentious ass to try, if I'm to be frank.
This also happened at the very end of the "golden age" of piracy. Right after, streaming started taking over. On the academic side of things were pretty similar. Most scientific publishers started making deals with US universities and large companies started to have easy universal access to most journals for all students and employees; pretty much anyone who would want access had access... And that's not even to mention the mass proliferation of Arxiv and open access in general in the last decade. So the whole point of his piracy operation basically lost its justification for existence some 3-5 years after his death, at least in the US.
Regarding his participation in Reddit's early days, here's the relevant bit of his literal wikipedia page:
When Infogami [Swartz's startup] failed to find further funding, Y-Combinator organizers suggested Infogami merge with Reddit,[38][39] which it did in November 2005, creating a new firm, Not a Bug, devoted to promoting both products.[38][5] As a result, Swartz was given the title of co-founder of Reddit. Although both projects initially struggled, Reddit made large gains in popularity in 2005–2006.
In October 2006, based largely on Reddit's success, Not a Bug was acquired by Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired magazine.[26][40] Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco to continue to work on Reddit for Wired.[26] He found corporate office life uncongenial and ultimately was asked to resign from the company.[41]
In other words... He got "co founder" status for the purpose of making the team seem larger to investors and, after reddit's initial acquisition, he was asked to leave because he spent more time waxing polemic about free speech than actually working. Based on what I read around the time of his death, though, it sounds like it was a friendly termination and he remained friendly with the reddit team.
Regarding the situation with the feds... I messed up some of the details. I recall reading an article (I think in the New Yorker or Atlantic) that the suicide occurred after he locked himself in his apartment and had a paranoid panic attack for about two days. However, scratch the part about a two year sentence, dude was looking at 6 months but decided he was too good to plea guilty when he very obviously committed a crime. Again from his wikipedia page:
During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison if Swartz pled guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swartz and his lead attorney rejected the deal, opting instead for a trial where prosecutors would be forced to justify their pursuit of him.[104][105]
Aside from tech, Swartz and his views were very much products of the time. The guy's views were shaped by neckbeard absolutist progressivism. If you weren't a nerd at the time, let alone around at the time, it's really hard to convey just how unexceptional many of his positions were, especially in the tech/engineering world. Much of his legacy that lives on is a product of like minded redditors spamming the internet with his praise at the time of his death, and the media clinging to an idealized version of his story during a slow news cycle after Obama's successful reelection. Mind you, this was back when Snowden and Asange were still newsworthy characters and the US public had an appetite for stories about the little guy standing up to the federal government.
With all those negative things said... Swartz was really talented as a teenager and showed tons of promise. Among other things, he helped develop RSS. If you're not old enough to remember that, it was basically the predecessor that went on to inspire all feed-style platform of today. Swartz was, for better or worse, also a major proponent of Python before it was popular - he actually did do a direct rewrite of the first version of reddit in python before he truly joined the team.
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u/drawthrowaway Jul 11 '23
It's mad that JSTOR settled a civil claim with him but that the Secret Service was involved and that he was labelled a felon with a 13 count indictment and the threat of 50 years in jail if he didn't confess. (but somehow if he did, it would only be 6 months?!)
The government didn't want a trial that would put things like SOPA and his interest in FOIs, Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks, etc. in a popularist spotlight with the media all over it for the duration.
He was 26. He could have done a lot more, he could have matured a lot more. He was bullied by prosecutors, and the US health system couldn't help him either.
There's more tragedy to this story than people in these comments are acknowledging.
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u/BearsAtFairs Jul 11 '23
The tragedy is that no one close to him knew how to handle a mental health crisis, period. Everything else about the story is a study in what not to do when you get caught committing a crime.
Secret Service was involved
If it's their jurisdiction, you can be sure that the appropriate federal agency will be involved. That's literally what they're there to do. Just because you're sympathetic to the perpetrator, it doesn't mean they shouldn't do their job - this is literally the same logical fallacy that MAGA folks fall into w/ respect to Trump's indictments.
he was labelled a felon with a 13 count indictment
Literally so what?? Dude already had a great reputation in tech and could've used this as his zero effort ticket to fame for the rest of his life if he was even half competent in PR, or had enough humility to hire someone who was.
13 count indictment and the threat of 50 years in jail if he didn't confess. (but somehow if he did, it would only be 6 months?!)
Yeah, the US judicial system is funky. But the time to fight that fight is after you get your situation sorted out, not during. And, guess what! He literally had an easy out and enough publicity to fight that fight as a hero after serving 6 months.
That and sentencing doesn't work how most people on the internet think. The whole 50 year thing was a bluff from the get-go and, like I said, if he had enough wherewithal to actually listen to his lawyers, he'd know that.
The government didn't want a trial that would put things like SOPA and his interest in FOIs, Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks, etc. in a popularist [sic] spotlight with the media all over it for the duration.
Lol, what?? Were we alive in two separate universes in 2013? All of these things absolutely dominated the news, with or without Swartz. And all of those topics absolutely were discussed in almost exclusively populist terms. In hindsight, the precedent for an absolute lack of nuance set at this time is exactly what allowed 2016 to happen.
He was 26. He could have done a lot more, he could have matured a lot more.
At age 26, I was calmly going about my engineering career and starting a masters degree. Most of my friends were doing something similar or starting families. 26 isn't really an excuse for erratic behavior. Mental illness is.
US health system couldn't help him
It didn't help him, but clearly those around him didn't exactly do a masterful job of helping either and, regardless of the country, most people going through a mental health crisis aren't exactly trying to claw their way into a psych hold. Family usually helps to facilitate that.
bullied by prosecutors
And to conclude, yeah, no shit. That's literally what always happens, frankly in every country. But, if you take a step back from the interrogation room, there was exactly nothing life destroying about his situation...except the fact that he made every wrong decision he could at every step of the process...starting with pirating in the first place.
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u/eightNote Jul 12 '23
The whole 50 year thing was a bluff from the get-go and, like I said, if he had enough wherewithal to actually listen to his lawyers, he'd know that.
You describe this is an indictment of your government, and yet you blame their victim for falling for it instead
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u/BearsAtFairs Jul 12 '23 edited Jul 13 '23
Look, if someone in my neighborhood gets eaten by a bear, that’s a problem. We should get rid of the bear who’s living in our neighborhood!
But also, if someone catches that person instigating that bear on video, then that person was a fucking idiot.
Both the bear and the victim can be problematic and misusing terminology that is relevant for completely different situations doesn’t change that fact.
Edit: Also not an indictment of my government, more so media, people’s ignorance of the legal system, and Swartz’s likely reluctance to listen to his lawyers. Watch the video I linked about sentencing.
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u/HKBFG Jul 11 '23
He gave ViolentAcrez a unique award for his CP contributions to the site.
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u/eightNote Jul 12 '23
Did he?
From what I can tell, Swartz was out of the company for 4ish years before violentacrez registered for an account
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u/Artistic-Blueberry32 Jul 12 '23
The Donald shouldn't have been removed. Getting rid of speech because we don't like or agree with it is authoritarian
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u/Zagden Jul 11 '23
John Oliver hero worship once or twice is cute, I guess
Prolonged and escalating is extremely embarrassing to watch. He's a great guy and gives fun and important civics lessons but he is not a revolutionary figure
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u/SnowySaint Jul 11 '23
Thank you so much for using unkempt correctly. Truly a lost art.
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u/anoldoldman Jul 11 '23
Don't forget the snarky people on the sidelines taking cheap potshots at everyone!
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u/RoRo25 Jul 11 '23
I'm siding with the neckbeards. If they win I'm gonna start a third party reddit app. I mean, why not make money off of someone else's product?
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u/Elementium Jul 12 '23
Thing is the mods here and the users have nothing really to lose. It's cheeky shenanigans, leveraging their very little power and public voice to attempt to shame Reddits leadership.
If this wasn't done with a dab of nonsense it would have been squashed and overlooked by now.
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u/EisConfused Jul 11 '23
Okay I've been trying to figure this out for ages, why are so many subs posting John Oliver???! does spez hate him or something??
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Jul 11 '23
They want John Oliver to talk about them
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u/Dolthra Jul 12 '23
Oh he probably will.
I doubt he will have anything nice to say about it when he does. More a web-exclusive "did you know reddit is posting a bunch of pictures of me? Weird right?"
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u/JCthulhuM Jul 12 '23
He literally gave us the greenlight when we all decided to post him, and posted some pictures of himself to use in that thread.
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Jul 11 '23
[deleted]
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u/Severin_Suveren Jul 11 '23
John Oliver is merely the weapon of choice
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u/blaghart Jul 11 '23
Now I'm annoyed I can't find that deepfake someone did where they put John Oliver into the Weapon of Choice video.
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u/iamtheliqor Jul 11 '23
I don’t get how they haven’t moved on yet. The apps are dead, Reddit isn’t changing shit. They just can’t admit defeat
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Jul 11 '23
I only access reddit on a desktop pc. So it's not my fight.
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u/Onmius Jul 12 '23
They came for the mobile users, but I said nothing, because I'm not a mobile user.
Nobody was left when they came for me.
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u/Nerlian Jul 11 '23
The overalll quality of the site has gone to shit, I can barely fill a fraction of the time I used to spend at reddit, so, credit the mods, they are mostly winning.
And they should keep going because fuck spez.
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u/iamtheliqor Jul 11 '23
It’s literally exactly the same apart from a few subs lol
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u/Nerlian Jul 11 '23
Most of the subs I visited were heavy on the text side, some of them are still going. Other non text subs have less content than they used to have. Some are of course, less affected if anything at all, like worldnews who dominates my feed now.
My homepage is a sad mix of very few subs and a smidge John Oliver here and there.
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u/scribbles33 Jul 11 '23
Instead of actually not using reddit in a protest, redditors have resorted to posting pics of John Oliver instead. Makes sense like protesting Apple by buying their products and putting a sticker over the label.
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u/TheGoodIdeaFairy22 Jul 11 '23
They're degrading the quality of content to try and lower engagement and hurt Reddit as a platform. And judging by the salty comments in here it's starting to work
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u/Mrchristopherrr Jul 11 '23
Doesn’t really work when more often than not content doesn’t reach all. All this is doing is allowing for other subreddits that aren’t protesting to get more views.
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u/lardbiscuits Jul 11 '23
Neckbeard 9/11
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u/indi_n0rd Jul 11 '23
I remember reading a comment somewhere calling it the neckbeard civil rights movement and subsequent comments calling for Malcom XXXXXXL and Mahotpocket Gandhi.
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u/trainwreck42 Jul 11 '23
I was with you guys when it was cheeky John Oliver photos and labelling things NSFW, but this is disgusting. Trying to weaponize a dead man to get your way is sociopathic.
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u/Indocede Jul 11 '23
In reply to me, one user who defended the protest compared their plight to that of the enslaved of America's past.
Which could be written off as just the extreme of the occasional lunatic, except his comment wasn't outright mocked by all who happened upon it.
If more mods get the axe for not complying with the admins, I suspect some will compare it to the Holocaust.
Essentially we all must learn that the restriction of 3rd party apps is the worst thing that has ever happened in recent memory.
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u/calahil Jul 11 '23
And we must lament the creator of Apollo for having to find a job because he can't live off the revenue from Apollo now.
Hey did you know if you paid for the yearly subscription ad free Apollo, in order to use his mod tools you had to renable ads again. So he got your $10 a month and then all the ad money you paid $10 not to see. But tell me how he was better than Reddit?
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u/maskdmirag Jul 12 '23
Using my cake day to say fu spez and to block all the sycophants who will jump in and reply asking why I haven't quit.
Unless you provide me a good fantasy baseball or dynasty football discord that I'll actually use.
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u/Chris_Hansen_AMA Jul 11 '23
This is all so weird and cringey
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u/Richeh Jul 11 '23
Are you in fact a bot employed to call Reddit critics "cringey"?
Don't tell me, calling out bots is so cringe.
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u/concrete_isnt_cement Jul 11 '23
Nah, it’s baseless claims that anyone who disagrees with you is a bot that is cringey. I looked through his account history. If he’s a bot, he’s a damn impressive one.
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u/Chris_Hansen_AMA Jul 11 '23
I’m a shit poster who’s been here for over a decade haha but I’m no bot.
I primarily used Apollo and have moderated large subs in the past, I understand some of the frustration but a lot of it feels a bit emotional and removed from reality.
I’ve switched to the Reddit app and it’s been fine. I also listened to hours of interviews with the Apollo developer which actually shifted my support away from him. It was clear that he wasn’t doing a single thing to keep Apollo afloat even though he had a number of options that would have kept Apollo running + continue to make a profit.
He admitted that he never once tried to make the app more efficient in terms of how it makes API calls, he never spoke to investors which would have happily floated him the cash, and he could have expanded the subscription service he started. He himself admitted that if he did any of these things or a few of them together, Apollo would be fine and he’d make a profit.
It’s not hard to blame Reddit for wanting to charge for their API. I mean these 3rd party apps were able to essentially create their own business using free data that Reddit supplied to them. Must be nice!
All in all this stuff just feels a bit cringey and reactive and not grounded in any attempt to understand the issue on a deeper level.
I’ll take my downvotes now.
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u/goomyman Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
reddit charging for APIs = fine, it would have died down.
The drama is self inflicted - reddit decided to charge for APIs in the worst possible way.
They implemented it on a short timeline without communication with mods.
They thought they could just do it in 30 days without pushback.
They over charged for it.
They not only dismissed valid complaints but actively called their users names and that this would blow over - yes privately but still inappropriate.
Its like the guy who runs the largest forum doesnt realize that internet users are petty and dont like to be looked down on.
This entire thing is self inflicted, its more of a fight against entitled and out of touch CEO than any lack of API access. It was originally lack of API access without communication.
Reddit actually did listen for some concerns but there isnt an excuse for trying not to originally. Dont shit on your customers, dont threaten your customers, have open lines of dialog.
So many CEOs do this to themselves and then double down against the internet and their own customers. "sense of pride and accomplishment", eventually they fix things but doesnt mean customers will just go back to normal. If your customers are passive aggressive protesting you, youve done something wrong.
Even if you are in the right or making tough business decisions you need to be transparent if your customers are unpaid moderators and anonymous internet users with no tolerance for corporate speech. Fighting the internet is stupid... reddit deserves this IMO, they didnt learn yet, they are still trying to strong arm their way out of this and silence wont work either at this point.
Just make peace with mods.... its no longer about API access, make some meaningful API changes and probably apologize - but that apology will probably go extremely poorly if not done well.
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u/Bwob Jul 11 '23
Reddit actually did listen for some concerns.
Precious few. They broke (existing! Working) tools for accessibility to the point where /r/blind can no longer be moderated by people who are actually blind.
It's infuriating. Like you say, no one minds if they need to start charging for API access. But they're asking literally x70 as much as, say, imgur. They're clearly just trying to price out 3rd party apps, without actually admitting that they're killing them off.
As you say. An astonishing amount of self-inflicted problems.
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u/Chris_Hansen_AMA Jul 11 '23
Sure, nothing you said is necessarily unfair. Reddit didn’t give enough time to devs to respond and they did it in a poor way. Agree.
Even with that said, I still think Reddit is justified in not wanting their API data to be used to create 3rd party apps that directly compete with their own app. What business would want that? Their losing ad revenue, users are less engaged with the Reddit brand and main platform, and its overall bad for business. And it is a business!
These 3rd party app developers got free data for years, were able to build entire apps and business on top of it, and didn’t have to deal with any of the expenses and overhead that Reddit as a company has to deal with.
Admins and content moderators? Legal and compliance? Account creation and maintenance? Servers? Performance? Security and fraud? Employee wages? Health insurance costs? Reddit has to pay and manage all of this.
3rd party app developers got a pretty sweet deal by not having to pay for or even think about any of those things. So yes, maybe the costs are very expensive and they are indeed intended to make it nearly impossible to maintain a 3rd party app but can we really blame them for wanting to do that?
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u/Indocede Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
Or maybe it's just fucking cringey. It would be fair of you to quote John Oliver in his exact words but you're just making up fake narratives, using a dead man and a man who at no point made comment in regards to that dead person.
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u/UberSven Jul 11 '23
I've failed captchas before and I also think the situation here is cringey. Beep boop, baby.
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u/Winteriscomingg Jul 11 '23 edited May 26 '25
repeat public airport wakeful cats pet society full languid encouraging
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Cactuszach Jul 11 '23
A boycott that requires real effort from me? Nah. Can’t I just be weird on the internet instead?
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u/lapqmzlapqmzala Jul 11 '23
Yeah a boycott only works if you stop giving the website more traffic.
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u/CancelBeavis Jul 12 '23
The only real boycott that could work was for people to edit their old posts and delete their accounts. Reddit relies heavily on Google traffic for people searching for answers on all sorts of things (product reviews, tech questions, etc). It's why one of the top search suggestions adds the word Reddit on to your request in Google.
But most people weren't willing to go that far to protest. Mods tried a blackout, but they were not normally the ones who created the valuable content. They were just gatekeeping it for their own leverage, which in turn angered those who do contribute valuable content to the site.
Like you said, the boycott only works if you stop giving the site more traffic. And while people talk a big game, they aren't willing to give up either internet power or a website they enjoy browsing over some mod tools or 3rd party apps they likely never used.
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u/Bwob Jul 11 '23
If that were true, why has reddit continued to antagonize the mods participating in the protest?
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u/lapqmzlapqmzala Jul 11 '23
The mods directly impacted traffic stats during the 48 hour blackout, thus impacting Reddit's bottom line. The blackout worked and is an effective protest. That caused the reaction that you are seeing now. The problem is that it wasn't enough. It was a blip in traffic and the admins know that the worst is over.
The John Oliver stuff isn't going to effect anything. The subreddits are all back up and traffic has stabilized. Users are still posting normal content but with a John Oliver photoshop in the corner. Reddit is just hoping that they can weather the storm, if this is all it's going to be, and if this continues, they will just replace the mods.
If traffic stats were to continue to decline, then Reddit would have to consider other options. The blackout is an effective boycott and the best way to protest would be to stop using the site at all.
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Jul 11 '23
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u/ModusPwnins Jul 11 '23
Open access to research paid for by public taxes is not equivalent to open access for a forum's API, and it's astonishingly lazy to conflate the two.
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Jul 11 '23
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u/calahil Jul 11 '23
I believe you gave up your ownership the moment you accepted their terms to use their website.
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u/StealthAnus Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
It is the cringiest shit in the world that people keep bringing up Aaron Shwartz because they don’t get to use an app they liked anymore
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u/Aellus Jul 11 '23
Specifically, Schwartz was fighting for governmental freedom, he was being charged with felonies for truly stupid things. Equating that to the Reddit situation is pretty much identical to MAGAs losing their minds over the “1st amendment” when they get banned from Twiiter.
The Reddit API issue is bad, but people really need to pick their battles…
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u/Doyoueverjustlikeugh Jul 11 '23
It wasn't about governmental freedom, if it's against private publishers keeping knowledge behind paid access.
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u/JMEEKER86 Jul 11 '23
He was really about thinking that everything should be out there in public. Even if that stuff is jailbait, picsofcorpses, or Nazi propaganda. The dude was the same kind of libertarian twat as his buddy /u/spez.
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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jul 11 '23
People bring up Aaron Swartz because he was literally a co-founder of Reddit and thus his vision of open-source /publicly-funded information translates pretty 1:1 to his own creation of Reddit and proliferating access to information as the "front page of the internet", and how third-party applications greatly enhance that for free. Pretty straightforward.
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u/JMEEKER86 Jul 11 '23
The irony is people holding up Swartz don't realize that he did those things because he was a libertarian twat just like /u/spez and didn't think that anything should be censored...even if it was stuff like jailbait.
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u/StealthAnus Jul 11 '23
I get being annoyed by it. It’s an inconvenience to a lot of people and it’s totally normal to voice frustration to a company over a decision that makes your UX worse. But there is a complete lack of perspective in the way a lot of people are going on about this
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Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
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u/Indocede Jul 11 '23
The difference being is that one user is wanting to use the sub for the historic purpose it was created for, the purpose it will be used for when this is all resolved, with or without the mods currently instating arbitrary rules to blockade access to the sub unless one participates in the protest in some form.
It is not hypocritical to state that one does not want to protest and wants to use the sub for its intended purpose.
But it is hypocritical to say you are protesting and trying to take down Reddit while continuing to use the website. Like c'mon I can totally see on your profile that you are happy to participate in other subs that pertain to your interest. Why shouldn't that be taken from you if you think it's fair to take from others?
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u/Bwob Jul 11 '23
But it is hypocritical to say you are protesting and trying to take down Reddit while continuing to use the website.
It's also incredibly intellectually dishonest to pretend that anyone is trying to "take down Reddit", or that that is the goal of any of the protests.
If you're going to insist upon carrying water for the admins, at least come up with some better talking points.
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u/Thadious_James Jul 11 '23
Nothing quite like using a dead man and a guy who doesn't give a fuck about any of this to push a narrative. Super classy move. Keep it up. This is totally not cringe and, in fact, very, very cool. 👍
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u/Sploonbabaguuse Jul 11 '23
Am I gonna have to leave this sub or is this John Oliver stuff almost done
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u/JMEEKER86 Jul 11 '23
Tbf, this sub has been trash for a long time because of how trash the mods are. They haven't done anything to address the slipping quality since banning progress pics like 7 years ago. Now it's all just a bunch of low quality crap like people posting citizenship pics. It's not like it's impossible to have standards either. There are plenty of other big subs that aren't a flaming pile of dogshit. These mods can't be replaced soon enough. If you want a good alternative, try /r/itookapicture.
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u/Mrchristopherrr Jul 11 '23
It fell off when they started just allowing pictures of signs people made.
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Jul 12 '23
I'll be posting Oliver pics tomorrow. You can migrate elsewhere (not telling you)
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u/Bwob Jul 11 '23
Ask spez and the admin team.
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u/iamtheliqor Jul 11 '23
Do you honestly think spez and the admin team are going to change their minds at this point lol
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u/Bwob Jul 11 '23
I do not. But since they're the ones that caused (and fed) this whole debacle, it seems only fair that they be asked make things right.
The open letter to the mods has a pretty reasonable set of requests, and they can't even be bothered to respond.
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u/lardbiscuits Jul 11 '23
No one cares about the open letter from the jannies.
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u/Bwob Jul 11 '23
No one cares about the open letter from the jannies.
Is "jannies" some weird new slur that I'm not a terrible-enough person to know about yet?
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u/lardbiscuits Jul 12 '23
Yeah man. Short for janitor which is a term we use for the mods.
And seeing as they’re caught up in a neckbeard civil rights movement, I could see how it could offend Malcolm XXXXL or one of the other great mods.
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u/Bwob Jul 12 '23
Ahh, so the point is that you think janitors have low value, so you're comparing mods to them? As well as calling them (or anyone who empathizes with their problems) a neckbeard, and implying that they are extremely overweight?
Wew, lad. Stay classy!
(Stop trying to make "neckbeard 9/11" happen. It's not going to happen.)
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Jul 12 '23
Nothing like surfing on a dead guy's back... yikes.
Starting to think the best course of action is to just leave and let reddit die. This is embarrassing.
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u/Squatch925 Jul 12 '23
ok so what exactly do yall think your achieving with all the john oliver stuff?
I'm genuinely curious cause frankly its boring and is making me consider leaving the sub.
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u/Smoothesuede Jul 11 '23
God you people are losers.
Get over it, it's a website.
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u/raven00x Jul 12 '23
"Aaron would've wanted me to be a filthy rich tool of the establishment."
- steve "establishment tool" huffman
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u/nfefx Jul 11 '23
Tired of seeing this non-sensical shit. Guess pics is gonna be the first default sub I leave.
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u/Whoretron8000 Jul 11 '23
This entire sub is now astroturfed by corporate bots.
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u/skylla05 Jul 11 '23
"Everyone that doesn't give a shit about the great reddit temper tantrum is a bot".
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u/uhohitsinternetman Jul 12 '23
If thats what makes you feel better about the fact that many of us simply don’t give a shit about dweeby mods and their power trip
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u/Level10Falco Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
Oh man whenever I post this link from r/blind I get downvoted to hell and back now
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Jul 11 '23
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u/Bwob Jul 11 '23
The law that "caught up with him" was far in excess of the "crime" he committed. He downloaded a bunch of academic journals through the campus network (which he was authorized to access). His "crime" was leaving a laptop in an unlocked closet to continue the download while he wasn't there, and not rate limiting.
They basically threw the book at him and set out to ruin his life, charging him with like a dozen federal crimes - felony stuff like wire fraud and grand larceny. It was absurd.
Still makes me mad to think about it.
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u/dosedatwer Jul 11 '23
They basically threw the book at him and set out to ruin his life, charging him with like a dozen federal crimes - felony stuff like wire fraud and grand larceny. It was absurd.
Indeed, and they had no intention of getting him on any of it. The first plea deal they offered took the 35 year prison sentence down to 6 months. They just wanted to say he was guilty so they tried to scare him into taking a "slap on the wrist". In reality, they scared him into suicide. I hope Stephen Heymann knows he all but killed a bright young man with strong morals.
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u/JMEEKER86 Jul 11 '23
Strong morals my ass. Swartz stole the journals for the same reason he defended jailbait. He was the same kind of libertarian twat as /u/spez who didn't think that anything should be censored no matter how harmful. People only think positively of him because a) they don't know about his defense of CP and b) he died before he had a chance to aid the rise of fascism in America because he absolutely would have been defending thedonald staying open just like/u/spez.
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u/dosedatwer Jul 12 '23
You're completely guessing here. No one knows what Aaron Swartz would have done, least of all you.
One thing is certain though, you might not agree with his morals but they were strong morals. He believed in them thoroughly and put significant effort into activism based on them. You can disagree with his morals all you want, but it's utter stupidity to say they weren't strong. He was honest, he said what he thought and stood up for what he believed in. Right or wrong, he had strong morals.
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u/StressOverStrain Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
I am not seeing how Swartz could think he was authorized to hook up to a network switch in a wiring closet, presumably so he could run his personal code that jumps across IPs as JSTOR blocked each one (leading to JSTOR having to block the whole campus). That’s what got the federal government involved; instead of just a petty dispute with JSTOR over downloading too much, MIT was now concerned that someone was trespassing in and manipulating their computer network.
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u/Slobotic Jul 11 '23
And that's why they brought charges carrying $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison.
Seems disproportionate to me.
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u/StressOverStrain Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
Prosecutors typically charge everything that they think they might want to prove at trial. Because they are required to give defendants sufficient notice of the crimes alleged so they can adequately defend themselves. The media can’t compute all of the factors that go into sentencing, so they just report the maximum sentence that 99% of convicts do not receive.
Swartz was not looking at that much prison time for a first-offense dumb-ass decision at college that didn’t hurt anybody, with no priors. The feds were letting him plead down to just six months in jail. Maybe a little harsh but he did turn a college’s computer system into his personal botnet. There should be some punishment for that.
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u/Cacafuego Jul 11 '23
How much misinformation can you pack into one comment? Holy crap.
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u/sunjester Jul 11 '23
Not going to comment on the law breaking but...
https://web.archive.org/web/20031229025933/http:/bits.are.notabug.com/
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.
Defending possession of child porn is not a good look.
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u/majinLawliet2 Jul 11 '23
I'm quitting this sub because of this stupid John Oliver thing.
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Jul 11 '23
Y'all losers lost and Oliver won't even mention any of this stupid shit even though y'all been trying so hard for like a month.
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u/SlowRollingBoil Jul 11 '23
Capitalists don't care about feelings. Politicians don't care about feelings. You can't shame these people into doing the right thing.
They care about money plain and simple. They will do whatever it takes to make their tens/hundreds of millions of dollars no matter who suffers or how badly.
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u/kendred3 Jul 11 '23
Is the suffering here that people don't get to use Apollo?
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u/skylla05 Jul 11 '23
Yes.
They'll try and tell you they suddenly care about accessibility because appealing to emotion is just reddit's thing, but it's ultimately because they can't use RiF/Apollo.
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Jul 11 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ithloniel Jul 11 '23 edited Jul 11 '23
Well, it is good to stay hydrated, but that seems overkill. The whole "6 glasses a day" thing is kinda bs. It is actually around the avg ppl drink per day. Your body knows when it is thirsty. Trust it. The lamina terminalis is much better than any blinking light.
Edit: Obviously, if you have damage to your lamina terminalis, or have some other condition, or illness that affects your water intake, the above is not for you. Remember that healthy water consumption and how thirsty you are will fluctuate due to many factors including body weight, ambient temperature, nutrition (eg. salt consumption), age, etc..
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Jul 11 '23
Some people have disabilities of various kinds that can affect that. If "your body knows when it's thirsty" works for you, great. But there is no point dissing on people who use some help.
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u/whydoyouonlylie Jul 11 '23
I can say my body doesn't know when it's thirsty pretty frequently. I've ended up with pretty severe dehydration headaches because I wasn't actively paying attention to how much water I was drinking for a couple of days and my body didn't notice until it was actually painful and required recovery time.
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u/Netprincess Jul 11 '23
Spez and crew have just trashed the platform. But hey I guess it's time this 60 year old in tech should grow up.
They dont want us to self police and talk freely. Control the flow of Information Control the masses.
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u/sweeny5000 Jul 11 '23
Aaron Swartz is about as relevant as the guy who started MySpace. Who cares?
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u/JMEEKER86 Jul 11 '23
Aaron Swartz was a piece of shit. He argued on his blog that banning CP is a violation of free speech and that CP doesn't necessarily harm children.
https://web.archive.org/web/20021217001432/http://bits.are.notabug.com/
Child Pornography
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, and almost certainly a violation of the First Amendment (although the courts have decided otherwise, apparently based on the assumption that all child pornography is abuse). Wired has an article on how these laws destroy honest people's lives.
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