Aaron Swartz, Asking For Help, 119 Days Ago

Here is the HN thread from back then. Some of it makes for pretty uncomfortable reading right now.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484</a>

I think the takeaway here is to <i>stop assuming you know entirely what is going on and give people the benefit of the doubt. There may be more factors involved than the ones you see; in fact, there always are</i> -- something HN is notorious for <i>not</i> doing (read: AirBnB, Dropbox, etc, etc, etc, etc).

So this is on the OP, which quotes the Lessig post:<p>&#62; <i>For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge.</i><p>I never understood this assertion. Under what procedural grounds would a judge punish someone raising funds for their defense? Or is referring to more of a "the judge will be annoyed at you" kind of sanction?

This is TechCrunch playing the role of Jerry Springer.<p>In spite of the way many interest groups are trying to make Aaron's suicide into a symbol, the fact is that suicide is simply a symptom of mental illness, and <i>nothing else</i>.<p>Unless we have reason to believe otherwise, most of us assume that those whose actions/views we discuss on HN are of normal (average) mental health.<p>So while Aaron's death is jarring, it's the mental illness that is jarring and not the nuanced view expressed by edw519.<p>TC must be hurting for clicks/readership these days. I think that story (sadly the current top story on HN) is a new low.

As the OP of the HN thread in question, the response then saddened me. But that pales in comparison to the grief I feel now. I hope HN takes this as an opportunity to reflect and introspect.

On the one hand, it is probably unlikely that HN could have done much to prevent Aaron's death. He was facing a terrible situation, one that he could not bear to face, and I doubt anyone here could have substantially changed his situation.<p>On the other, I can think of few things worse than facing a terrible situation, and feeling like you're doing so completely <i>alone</i>. The amount of speculation and analysis of Aaron's case here on HN was absurd (at one point prompting my only comments on the matter, <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544693" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544693</a>), and yet for all that analysis and speculation, there were ever so few comments that came out fully in Aaron's support.<p>Then he takes his own life, and suddenly it's torches-and-pitchforks for the prosecuting team, it's "why didn't he ask for help", it's "this was unjust", it's "this was unfair", it's "why didn't he have more support". I felt saddened by the news, but I also felt a rising amount of bile for the HN community, and I'm glad that nikcub and Arrington have shone a light on this.

I distinctly remember that thread, and not commenting. I was disappointed at the responses. I had given a small amount towards his defense fund since I thought his goals were worthwhile. I consider it a privilege to have contributed.<p>Now, I wish I had given more, and I wish I had commented on that thread.<p>"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

I think this speaks a bit to the mentality of technical people.<p>Your job is to find things that suck and call them on it/make them better. Unfortunately this tends to carry over into all aspects of life, that we can be/are overly critical of everything. Look at almost any great tech/design mind - they can be overly cynical at times.<p>One of the skills I respect most in a technical person is when they can say, "I hate this, but I love this" at the same time. Or better yet, "You're good at what you do, but this isn't your best work. X is good, but Y really sucks, fix the Y."<p>Honestly we have a long way to go regarding dealing with people.

It must have been hard on him to see his peers throwing him to the wolves. I think he could have tried harder to appeal to the hacker community, or maybe he couldn't for legal reasons, and that's yet another travesty revealed here.<p>His case was muddy. He did a few things that most of us would never do without expecting to be punished. He deserved a slap on the wrist, not to be robbed of his assets and locked up for years.<p>I think HN would have rallied to his cause after we realized how disproportionate the punishment was. I remember personally thinking things seemed weird, but was naively optimistic that it would turn out fine.<p>Lesson learned, the very hard way: it can't hurt to rally around someone even if they're not 100% in the right, if it looks like they're being bullied.

I see zero inconsistency between on one day saying that someone should take personal responsibility for their activism, and on another day regretting that this same person took their own life.<p>The notion that Aaron's legal position caused his suicide is an opinion of many people on this board. Despite the numbers of those holding this opinion, it is still only an opinion, and needn't be read as fact for any other analysis or opinion. The insistence that everyone hold _your_ opinions for all of _their_ opinions and moral calculations is, at very best, deeply problematic.

This is BS. edw519, and most of us, are not politicians. We should be free to believe in something to the best of our knowledge at any time. I have changed my perspective on almost everything I have ever believed in based on what information I come across.<p>To hold him, or anyone else for that matter, hostage to what he said 120 days ago is dishonest.

Bummed to see this thing dropping like a rock off the main page.<p>24 points in 26 minutes should have this article in the #2 slot, not #26. Is HN downmodding because it doesn't like the mirror?<p><pre><code> #pts hr min 130 2 0 382 6 0 146 3 0 24 1 0 20 0 56 120 4 0 165 5 0 57 2 0 82 4 0 52 3 0 165 6 0 15 1 0 65 3 0 93 5 0 26 2 0 232 10 0 35 3 0 171 8 0 26 3 0 73 6 0 24 3 0 20 2 0 68 6 0 24 0 26 194 11 0 28 4 0 115 9 0 </code></pre> <i>edit: something changed - now it's at #3... sufficiently many upvotes?</i>

The primary thing that stands out to me here, and what I believe is the main point of the TC post, is that edw and others clearly have very interesting 'before' and 'after' posts.<p>Before: "Aaron should man up, take responsibility for his actions, and pay his own bills."<p>Then: Aaron can't pay his bills, decides to take one form of responsibility and kills himself.<p>Now: "OH NO! Stunned &#38; heartbroken." "Thank you, Cory. This wonderful post will bring understanding (and maybe even comfort) to many of us who are sad and confused today. It will also probably save some lives."<p>It's not that Ed is to blame for Aaron killing himself, it's that there's a marked change in sentiment and sympathy after his death.<p>Did it really have to take Aaron killing himself for us to change our sympathies towards him? It seems not many of us really cared that much until he hung himself - and now we can't stop talking about him.<p>So the point I'd like to make is there's something wrong with a world that only cares after you kill yourself. Maybe Aaron even made the right choice is this is really how it works. Otherwise he might have quietly lived out his 50 years in prison and died later and no one would have given a shit the entire time. At least now this is getting some attention.

edw519 is a good member of this community. Let's not turn on each other.<p>After researching founders for my interviews I can tell you that it's easy to make anyone look bad based on old posts. It's much harder to stay focused on what's important.

It seems significant to me. There are a lot of users on HN whose default move is to criticize whatever story just made the main page. Maybe that's not the best default position.

Michael Arrington has written his share of trollish articles, but this is just mean spirited. I have a hard time remembering anything so hypocritical and hindsight-biased written after someone's death.<p>I will do my best to avoid reading anything written by Arrington from now on.

"unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge."<p>Considering the outcome... Does anyone know an example of what judges do when defendants appeal openly for financial help? Was this really good legal advice?

<i>"...judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases."</i><p>This seems <i>very</i> unjust, when the prosecutors love to hold a media circus where the handcuffed "perp walk" is the star attraction.

So people told it as they saw it.<p>That's the way hackers work and speak - and that sort of frankness is one of the major reasons that HN remains outstanding in terms of signal vs noise. We don't escape everything with weasel words and second-guess the way it's going to be interpreted. Commenters say what they think. Voters agree or disagree.<p>Yes, it comes back to haunt people. Yes, people are wrong on here every single day. But that's the nature of the discourse, and it will be a sad day if HNers start to worry about voicing their opinion because it could be taken the wrong way.<p>And, to pre-empt what I know will come, NO-ONE ever has all the facts. Ever. If we needed all the facts before we formed an opinion then we would have none.

To the HN elite (edw519 and tptacek): good on you for commenting on almost every thread, it's gotten you the most 'karma' possible.<p>Unfortunately, it means that when you jump into a new thread and contravene your other clearly-stated positions, it's a rather transparent attempt to get more attention.<p>You're not part of Aaron's family, you're not related, and your own words were pretty clear as to what you thought about the guy: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484</a>.<p>For the love of all things good, can people who didn't care in the first place about Aaron or his cause stop their fake sympathy now that he is dead? I didn't do anything for him either, but not going to cry any crocodile tears to show everyone how politically aware and smart I am.

I don't think this post should be here-- it's turning a tragedy into a witch hunt. I don't think this level of negativity and mob mentality is appropriate for HN.

And the witch hunt continues. This is all very reminiscent of the furore around the prank call nurse who committed suicide in the UK, with people calling for the unfortunate DJs to be charged with murder. I would have expected a more rational, dispassionate response from this crowd.

I'm convinced there has to be something <i>bigger</i> than that trial. Trying to rationally explain a suicide by pointing fingers at prosecutor might relief a bit of guilt for some but it's IMO naive. As far as I'm concerned, Aaron committed suicide because he didn't want to live on this planet anymore. He tried so hard to change things, to make the world better. And he actually succeeded, but that probably wasn't enough for a brilliant mind like his. Could it be that he was disgusted at how indifferent people were? By people, I mean <i>most people</i>, not just the governments or some particular entities.

This is dumb...<p>A person can disagree with an individual's actions and still be sad when that person passes away.<p>There was no need for this by techchrunch. In fact this article is useless, and complete bullshit.<p>This article does nothing productive, it adds no value to anything, but only takes away from the whole situation.

I'm not sure why I'm commenting here, I expect it'll just be shouting into the void given the nature of this thread. However, there are some things that rub me the wrong way about all this, so maybe I'll try to make a few points.<p>One thing that's been bugging me is how, to be blunt, intellectually lazy so many people seem to have been about this whole thing, especially the case against Aaron. Everyone is looking for the easy answer, the soundbite that wraps the whole thing in a bow. I thought that HN was a bit smarter than that, that's a sucker's game, it's a game for tabloids and cable news, not a way for smart people to approach complex problems. And this is a complex problem with no easy answer. The case against Aaron was complex. The law involved was complex. And the application of the law was also complex. It's not as easy as "he was innocent!" or "he was guilty!", because even if either one were easily established in the "court of public opinion" then that's really only the starting point of several much more difficult questions.<p>I think it's probably fair to say that guilty or not the prosecution was overzealous, as the sorts of punishments he faced was all out of proportion to what one would expect for a white collar crime, even one potentially involving thousands of dollars of losses.<p>In the same vein people have been reacting to this tragedy by trying to find scapegoats. Whether that's the prosecutor, or edw519, or MIT, or whomever. I don't think I need to spend time addressing why that sort of behavior is a bad idea.<p>Going back and looking at the comments in the older thread about Aaron's legal troubles I've spotted a few instances of several trouble behaviors that I've noticed have become more and more common. One, the idea that "rich" people are less deserving of sympathy because of their wealth. I've seen this in the rise of the "99%" mentality and other phenomena. Personally I don't think there is any amount of wealth that renders an individual's pain and suffering unworthy of caring about. Two, the idea that punishment is reasonable after being charged but before being sentenced, or infliction of pain and suffering in general as a response to crimes. You see this sort of thing in support for torture, support for poor conditions in jail, sympathetic depictions of police brutality in fiction, public approval of widespread sexual assault in prisons, etc. And you also see it in the idea that there's nothing wrong with a trial being a punishing, life-altering, resource draining experience.<p>I think these sorts of things are antithetical to the ideals of liberty, equality, justice, rehabilitation, etc. that we should desire our societies rest upon, rather than base instincts like jealousy, revenge, punishment, retribution, schadenfreude, etc.<p>I don't think this saga bears much, if any, similarity to a fight between absolute heroes and absolute villains. I think that even in as much as the prosecutor was overzealous it's as much a systemic problem of the way that computer and IP related "crimes" are perceived and handled by the criminal justice system as it is to be due to any ill-will or villainy on her part.<p>I'd much rather we, HN and the tech community in general, were taking the time to talk through the details of the case more carefully, discussing the details of the relevant law (and whether it's well grounded, meaningful, useful, and generally well applied), and bigger issues such as IP issues, computer security issues, problems with our criminal justice system in general, etc. than looked for quick-fix easy answers and tried to fit this story into a simplistic mold. I wonder what sort of discussion Aaron would have preferred take place.

I remember wanting to contribute, but didn't after finding out he was the co-founder of a successful startup.<p>I also remember, half a year ago, looking at his comment history that seemingly appeared as if he was fine, thinking "How is this guy taking it? If it was me I am not sure I'll be able to handle the pressure".<p>I realise now he was only human, like us, and everyone needs other's support in their darkest times, but it's too late.

The principle of free information transmission must extend to its advocates: if you advocate that information must be free and you engage in civil disobedience, then you ought to expose your finances to the world when requesting support for a legal defense fund. Exposing one's finances at such a time demonstrates adherence to principle, and it blunts skepticism.

Why would it be a surprise that people change their opinion or become more vocal after something serious occurs to the people involved.

On the other hand, the comments on this post (120 days ago) is quite supportive of Aaron and criticizes the govt for its harsh indictment. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528083" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4528083</a>

It must be quite easy to generate cheap melodrama such as this when you can use the front page of TechCrunch as a glorified "retweet" button.

It's pretty hard to read that thread. This is a good lesson in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Always.

<i>If only most knew then, what they know now.</i><p>It's saddening that a positive response to that appeal <i>might've</i> actually helped him - both mentally and financially.

What a sorry post. This is the kind of thing I expect to be banned from the front page.

A few months ago, edw519 made a comment that many here feel was inappropriate given that we now know more facts, and given that Aaron committed suicide. So the lesson people take away is: "Be careful about what you say to people, even on HN: your words may have a real effect, and being dismissive or mean to people may just haunt you later".<p>This is a good lesson, in general. But what I love is the irony - the way people are sending out this message <i>is by being dismissive and mean to edw519</i>! If (God forbid) something ever happened to edw519, and someone in 4 months posted this thread, the same people condemning edw519 will b IN EXACTLY THE SAME SHOES as they think he is now. How are the people posting so blind to this?<p>Note: edw519 is a great person and member of this community. Despite the lesson that I believe can be learned from this post, I absolutely DO NOT think he did anything wrong, and thinking otherwise is clearly because things look different in hindsight, especially given more information. Seriously edw519 - consider this another person who is sure you did absolutely nothing wrong.

It does kind of suck to look back and realize that his own people turned their back on him, though. Not very hacker of us, sadly. I remember reading that article originally, and obviously looking back I wish I had taken some kind of action. Didn't have to be money, I'm sure, but something would have been better than basically rejecting his plea for help in a condescending tone.

Asking that someone own up to their responsibilities or shoulder their own problems is ABSOLUTELY NOT the same as wishing them dead.

Ugh. I wish I'd seen that thread originally, but I was on my first vacation in years, and not reading HN for some reason.<p>I couldn't give him much money, but it sounds like just talking to him about the case would have helped, and I doubt even people who thought he did the wrong thing or should have gone to jail to continue his protest would have begrudged him that.<p>Sorry, Aaron. :(

When you say that a person who committed suicide "asked for help", it makes it sound like he reached out for emotional support in a time of desperation.<p>While that might have been partially what Aaron was doing, I think the headline leads you to picture a horrifying scenario in which the young man's death might have been avoided, if only the community had been more encouraging or sympathetic. Instead, you find that he was asking for financial support, and there's of course no reason to believe that sending him money could have altered the tortured course that ended with him taking his own life.<p>It may seem like a trivial point but in my opinion it completely warps this whole conversation. For example, suppose someone shares with you that they have been terribly depressed and contemplating suicide. In this case, I agree, telling them to "man up" is pretty bad form. But that is not <i>exactly</i> what happened here.

Can we be a little nicer?<p>There were nasty comments about Aaron in that HN post, which got nasty replies.<p>There were nasty comments about Ed in this thread, which got nasty replies.<p>There were nasty comments about Michael in the linked post, which got nasty replies.<p>We can say the most criticizing things in a way that is not nasty, how? but putting question marks instead of exclamation points. By talking about facts and not opinions. By being aware that the persona we are taking about is also a person, by always thinking what if I was on the other end of that comment.<p>Is there any drawback in being nicer? I can't think of any. Is there any benefit for being nasty? I can't think of any either.

Allow me to make a confession:<p>I didn't think much of Aaron Swartz while he was alive. Most of his writings seemed self-absorbed to me. I had difficulty understanding how someone with his politics could be a mac fanboy. People I think highly of (Chris Webber, John Sullivan) thought highly of him so I was induced to give him some benefit of the doubt on those grounds, but I certainly couldn't understand what they saw in him.<p>I assumed he was a millionaire with enormous resources that he was using to thumb his nose at powerful people. I felt that if I had the resources (I assumed that) Aaron had, I would use them differently.<p>I saw the thread about Aaron's campaign fund and I didn't post, but I did read it.<p>And I read Edward's comment and I agreed with it.<p>I knew very little about Aaron's case. But the way that fund was being put together seemed underhanded to me, like he wanted to take people's money without really acknowledging it. Is he a millionaire or not? I wondered, and if not, why doesn't he come out with it and explain what happened?<p>Of course now I know of the existence, from Lawence Lessig, of the bizarre Kafkaesque muzzle the judge had on Aaron, but how could anyone who wasn't very closely familiar with Aaron and his case know about that?<p>There's a sort of sick serendipity in this for me. Just last week I read Kafka's The Trial. The word "Kafkaesque" keeps getting thrown around but it's stunning---<i>stupefying</i> to me, how many parallels there are between that book and Aaron's case.<p>In Kafka, after the protagonist is arrested he's immediately released. The police even escort him to work and tell him to go about his life. At first he thinks that's an great thing that he wasn't hauled off in custody, but as the trial grinds on he comes to realize that being forced to live every day as the facsimile of a free man being required to do what free men are inclined to do while carrying the additional burden of dealing with his trial, is itself torture.<p>If anyone remembers the bruhaha around Dmitry Sklyarov, or before that DVD John or Kevin Mitnick knows that this community rallies around men sitting in jail while the authorities try to come up with a crime to charge them with. There's no doubt in my mind that if the prosecution had hauled Aaron off to jail "for downloading some PDFs" the reaction would have been swift and boisterous.<p>I've learned a great deal about this country's "justice" system over the past two days, and mostly I've learned about the special sort of hell it put Aaron in, and I've come to realize that I was complicit in its work through my ignorance and indifference.<p>And all I can say about that is I feel a little bit sick. And that it won't ever happen again.

If anything "Tech Crunch" is the troll of the day.<p>Is it really such a shock people might inhibit their opinions after someone has just killed himself. No one expected it to get to this, Aaron probably wasn't <i>completely</i> innocent, And Our judicial system seems to have failed him.<p>Trying to polarize it into some "You're either with Aaron" or "you're against him" just means falling deeper into this cesspool of a thread.

It strikes me that another relevant comparison would be the Hacker News reaction to weev's conviction: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4808676" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4808676</a>

Wrong or not, Ed's comment was very cold-hearted, uncompassionate, pretentious, egoistic even sexist. That said, I see a lot of this in IT/tech word in general and it makes me sad to work in this field.

In retrospect, this comment by "mibbitier" is particularly saddening.<p>"I agree. He was extremely foolish and arrogant at best. I don't think this belongs on HN. Also didn't he make a ton of money selling Reddit?! :/"

HN is the big brother you worship, your hero, the coolest guy you know. Then one night you find him drunk and coked up sleeping in the backyard in a pool of piss and vomit.<p>This topic is the backyard.

Leave it to TechCrunch to try to get more views on their website...

Why is this thread not showing among first results? It is heavily up-voted.

Is that the best Arrington could come up with?

This is sick. I'm at a loss for words.

Lets face it, HN and similar discussion sites bring out the worst in some people, including me.<p>I'm not going to comment on Ed's unfortunate statements because I've been an asshat to people in the past too.<p>It's a terrible thing when you don't have the opportunity to apologise later.<p>I'm sorry for all parties involved.

It's an accurate reflection of a subset of visitors of Hacker News. That subset are those that post here. I don't think they like what the reflection shows, so it might be a good learning experience.