For the general public he was seen as just another hacktivist along with various
hacktivist groups that were active around the time like lulzsec and anonymous.
But for the wider internet community, he represents something much much more,
especially post 2020 where we are all questioning many aspect of governance
that we take for granted as the normal state of the world.<p>In November the eight of 1986 Aaron Swartz was born. While his early childhood
was like any other kid, he showed early spark of someone who would be very
consequential to internet culture.<p>One of his first website to be recognized by the public is "The Info Network"
a user generated encyclopedia, created at the age of 12 years old which won
the ArsDigita Prize.<p>But later on he was accepted into Y Combinator's founder program on a startup
called infogami. While infogami failed to get further funding, his contribution
to the wider Y Combinator, got him in touch with another fellow co-founder to
work together on this small but potentially important firm known as Reddit.<p>If you are from Reddit or Hackernews, you will be very familiar with how the next
few years will go for Arron as well and so no further introduction will be needed.
(But you can follow further in his wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)<p>However what will be consequential to the wider public is his work as an tech
activist fighting for the same rights and values that digital natives in the
wider internet culture would fight for. Especially in the realms of copyright
laws and the wider debate on digital access and freedom.<p>This includes writing Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, as well as filing a FOIA
request to find out how Chelsea Mannings was treated after she was detained for
her alleged role in the WikiLeaks leaks.
In addition to to leaking PACER digital court records to improve public access,
which had him investigated by the FBI for potential copyright infringements.
And most importantly to rally the internet against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).<p>However it was tragically his efforts to push for open access to academic
journals (much of which was publicly funded research) that may have costed him
his life at 2008-12-13.<p>Eight years later, as we emerge from the global pandemic, it is about time we
celebrate his life and reflect on his his short time with us.
As well as reflecting on how his actions had inspired countless digital natives
current and in the future to continuously push and fight for the
right for information to be free and transparent.
It doesn't as get much attention, but Aaron was working a lot on a lot of pro-democracy anti-corruption money-out-of-politics activism in his latter years, founding "Change Congress" with Lessig, which later became "Rootstrikers", an organization focused on eradicating dark money in politics.<p>Aaron Swartz was also a Progressive (having co-founded "Demand Progress") and a Keynesian (<a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/keynes" rel="nofollow">http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/keynes</a>) who believed in taxing the rich in the service of a functioning economy, I wonder what he would have thought about all the bullshit coming from Paul Graham these days in his vitriolic defense of the status quo. He couldn't be very happy to hear Graham saying we don't need to tax and spend on infrastructure to get us out of the climate mess.
For anyone who hasn't seen it yet.<p>The Internet's Own Boy<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaro...</a>
You can also remember him for his work on Markdown, which he developed together with John Gruber (Daring Fireball):<p><a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001189" rel="nofollow">http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001189</a><p><a href="https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown" rel="nofollow">https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown</a>
> If you are from Reddit or Hackernews, you will be very familiar with how the next few years will go for Arron<p>99.99% of people from Reddit will have never heard of Aaron (not 'Arron'). I think people mis-estimate what most people on that site are for - but it's not tech activism anymore, if it ever was, and they don't have any interest in who runs the site, much less who used to run the site.
I remember the Creative Commons launch party, and mistaking Aaron for someone attendee's kid - he would have been what, Jesus, sixteen or seventeen? At least until Larry Lessig introduced him. He was so wee, and so obviously brilliant.<p>I only ever met him in person once more, at CCC, but we were both working a little bit on an OLPC project. I had such respect for him.<p>Vaya con Dios, kid.
His birthday is November 8, 1986<p>Take the time to remember the kind of person he is.<p>Electron workshop is having a watch party for Americans today at Monday, November 8 at 1pm in Illionis, US.<p><a href="https://venue.electronworkshop.com.au/b/dod-3rc-jhv-re0" rel="nofollow">https://venue.electronworkshop.com.au/b/dod-3rc-jhv-re0</a><p>For Aussies, the workshop is playing another session right now starting at 9pm Sydney time.
It’s also worth remembering that Aaron Swartz was driven to near bankruptcy and facing prison time over a victimless crime that in the greater scheme of things seems quite trivial.<p>The prosecutors, Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz, used their discretion to play hardball and this in no small part played a role in his decision to take his own life.<p>On the plus side, however, it appears their abuses of power more or less ended their careers. Heymann has not updated his LinkedIn in almost a decade and Ortiz’s ambitions to become governor of Massachusetts were squashed.
> may have costed him his life at 2008-12-13.<p>What does this line mean? Aaron took his own life several years later than that. That seems like a date copied from a Creative Commons event on his Wikipedia page and an odd error to make for someone following the story.
One of Aaron's contributions is not mentioned very frequently. He is also the co-founder of the site Demand Progress, created to fight for various progressive causes.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Progress" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Progress</a>
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Web, said that Aaron was a mentor to him. When I was doing a startup in 02000, we told him what we were doing; he replied by explaining all the problems we were going to run into in the next several months, and was mostly correct. He was 13.<p>I worked with him on another small project later, called Watchdog.net; whenever we disagreed, he changed his mind when I presented my arguments, except when I was wrong. I have never met anyone else of whom I could say that.<p>Aaron organized the successful effort to stop SOPA/PIPA, successfully provided public access to most of PACER at great risk to himself, founded Demand Progress, and made significant contributions to Markdown, RSS, Reddit (a company of which he was a founder), Creative Commons, Change Congress, and Wikipedia, all before committing suicide at 26 to escape legal persecution by the kind of people who use the word "hacker" to mean "computer criminal".<p>In this comment thread there are a few semiliterate baboons saying things like "I don't understand the cult of personality around Aaron". They should be permanently banned from HN.
I guess this is his website?<p><a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.aaronsw.com/</a><p>Interesting, that he introduced himself in the third person.<p>I wonder what made him take this approach?
I think I could’ve been friends with Aaron, he seemed like such a great person. That he took his own life says something about his attitude towards it and it resonates with me. It’s a choice and there may be reasons why you are willing to commit to it. Of course I wish he hadn’t but I respect it.
For historical value, the effort to remove Aaron as Reddit co-founder by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman.<p>paulgraham 40 points 14 years ago<p>Aaron's not wrong to call himself one of the founders. The company behind Reddit was a merger of two startups, one that made Reddit and one that made Infogami, and in that situation the founders of both startups are considered founders of the combined company.<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1okmc/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...</a><p>previously:<p>2006 - <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070823200504/http://startupstories.com/2006/11/29/passion-for-your-users-will-come-back-alexis-ohanian-co-founder-of-reddit/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20070823200504/http://startupsto...</a><p>2007 - <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1oewi/?context=3" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...</a><p>2007 - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20219" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20219</a><p>2010 - <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_there_was_a_third_cofounder_of_reddit_who_was/c0x40yz/?context=3" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_th...</a><p>2011 - <a href="https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data-theft/" rel="nofollow">https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-...</a><p>2011 - <a href="https://archive.md/IRuu8" rel="nofollow">https://archive.md/IRuu8</a><p>2020 - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24677419" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24677419</a><p>2020 - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24713422" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24713422</a><p>2021 - <a href="https://www.redditinc.com/#section-4" rel="nofollow">https://www.redditinc.com/#section-4</a>
I put Aaron Swartz at par with Alexandra Elbakyan.
I wish I could financially support Ms Elbakyan's efforts but I am not so good at cryptocurrencies.
I once commented "The world would be a better place with Aaron Swartz in it" on Reddit and got downvoted. That's the sad world we live in.
His efforts and crusade went unnoticed for years and after his tragic death due to years of harassment and mental torture by lawyers and police, nothing changed.<p>The world and internet specially is cruel phony place which hardly remembers anything good, dismisses worthwhile endeavors while engaging in irrelevant culture wars.<p>Yes what Aaron did was illegal but the whole point of his crusade was that how unjust and inaccessible scientific research was to average person.<p>Neither the morally bankrupt left nor the completely inept libertarians took up his cause after his death.<p>His death will forever be in vain. It is a reminder for everyone to only take up “fashionable causes” which aren’t that important and only important for political mud slinging.<p>It is a reminder for all young people and me, don’t take up worthy causes, don’t try to change the world for better, they will kill you and make you irrelevant forever.<p>Just look after yourself like everyone does!
Hopefully it is remembered that MIT had everything to do with it and people should go to other schools and stop supporting the corporate fascists at mit.
Thread discussing the Aaron/reddit story etc in great detail, with a lot of comments from Aaron, gives a good taste of what he was like.<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...</a>
"They were singing, bye-bye, Miss American Pie.."<p>[edited]<p>I can remember the day, reading about Aaron's death. And the following days, reading up about his life. The investigation by MIT to see if they played any role in it. Led by Hal Abelson. Above song was playing whilst I read this submission, so I posted it because it felt appropriate. But I should have added some context..
Here's a list of number one posts about Aaron in the past for those interested:<p><a href="https://hn-saga.com/?q=aaron" rel="nofollow">https://hn-saga.com/?q=aaron</a>
Does anyone know when/how were the users of Infogami got merged with the Reddit ones? I barely remember a thing about Infogami but my user from there exists at Reddit.
i think the appropriate way to 'celebrate his life' is to actually push to achieve what he was trying to achieve -- namely, establishing free access to academic journals.
I don’t understand the cult of personality around Aaron. It’s like a self insert for people that fantasize about sticking it to the man or something; the tragic hero, the genius boy who died not realizing his potential, the man who dared to defy the authorities. Yawn.<p>Fact is Aaron was an angsty teen with an axe to grind with the authorities . Reading Chomsky certainly didn’t help. Acting out childishly by spreading copy righted material, getting caught and whining about how all of this is so unfair…<p>Look, he was no genius. Genius does not invent reddit; it invents facebook and then proceeds to take over the world because actual, real, genius understands the rules of the game.<p>Aaron was smart enough to understand just how fucked things are but oh so very dumb to act out on his aggressive impulses. The very same impulses that later lead him to kill himself.<p>Ironically his suicide accomplished far more than his technical know how could ever hope to achieve.<p>p.s. aaron was no hero. You dont ever want to be him and you certainly dont want your children to be him. His ideals were pure and correct, but he could not accept we’re living in a world filled with trash humans. Should’ve played the game correctly imho.
Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are at least still alive despite the all the moves done by autocrats like Obama/Trump/Biden. Aaron unfortunately is not around us still.<p>Let's remember how heavy handed the autocratic Obama administration was:<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/01/08/in-a-long-delayed-petition-response-obama-refuses-to-fire-u-s-attorneys-over-aaron-swartz/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/01/08...</a>