it's over bros

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Aaron Swartz , a reddit founder, believed in this. He believed it so much he literally broke into databases and stole the entire contents of all scientific journals with intention to release it all. The man had real beliefs and he was willing to get dirty and do it himself and fuck the laws that are in the way.

    In 2011, Swartz was arrested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT network in an unmarked and unlocked closet, and setting it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT.

    He would have radicalised years down the line if the state hadn't hounded him until he killed himself. I genuinely believe he would have been one of us.

    Sci Hub is blocked in the UK by court order btw. Have to VPN to get to it.

    • MendingBenjamin [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      he literally broke into databases and stole the entire contents of all scientific journals with intention to release it all

      Fwiw his legal defense rested on evidence that he intended to do a meta-analysis of climate change data to see if it was being suppressed compared to other subjects. But that could have easily been a cover. It’s not like he hadn’t made data public before either.

      Either way, I would have followed Aaron to the ends of cyberspace. RIP, comrade

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        I believe he was everything that made reddit a success in its earlier years. Things like the massive anti-SOPA campaign absolutely would not happen today, it was clearly driven by him.

        Early relationships with moderators, the real community that reddit had back then, the fostering of relationships and so on.. All Swartz in my opinion. Certainly some missteps with the free speech absolutism that led to reddit's early pedo controversies, but he was a half lib half ancap with real beliefs that were clearly connected to when the internet was COOL and run by pirates. 🏴‍☠️ He would have continued down that path.

        Reddit would be completely fucking different today.

        • grisbajskulor [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Damn. Just realized, was Aaron Schwartz the seed of all my current political views? Shit

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            It's kind of wild to think of what Reddit might have become if he radicalised over the years and the reddit CEO became a tankie or some shit.

            The site would have continued on a trajectory of very tech stuff I think, with a big focus on open source. Reddit wouldn't have gone closed. Reddit wouldn't have bent the knee on piracy issues. It would have got very heavily involved in social justice movements as well. This would have trended it towards loud and proud support of BLM, and within that massive radicalisations could have occurred. Antiwork coup by liberals would have been supported by admins rather than largely ignored. Admins would probably still have a communicative relationship with moderators instead of the Kafka-esque opaque rules and radio silence.

            • Foolio [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I suspect they would have shut down Reddit if it started heading in that direction. Or it would have just become another Slashdot, maybe with a more explicitly "left" bent.

              • DragonNest_Aidit [they/them,use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Or it becomes marginalized and instead of having to build Hexber, we'll just stick around at Reddit: the internet's tankie homepage.

              • Awoo [she/her]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Oh definitely. No undoing that early mistake.

            • grisbajskulor [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              I feel like retribution would have come no matter what. It's wild that he was suicided, but I guarantee if he had not flown that close to the sun that early, some other less dramatic shit would have gone down down the line. There is just no scenario where reddit blooms into a tankie site without getting coup'd or made irrelevant somehow. He's just one guy.

              Honestly best case scenario here would be that he starts a podcast or something

    • s0ykaf [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      i think you guys are deluded, he'd be a libertarian techbro with the occasional good twitter take

      probably 90% of libertarians i've met have been against IP, it's the one thing where they end up agreeing with commies, though for totally different reasons

      • johnrobbespiere [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        No, you should read his Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto (https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt). Pretty sure he was never, and probably would never be a techbro.

        • s0ykaf [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

          yea this is not the libertarian argument against IP, guy was legit

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Pretty sure it was a suicide, brought on by the state harassing him relentlessly. There's a whole thing to it, but my memory is too fuzzy to explain it from memory now lol.

      • johnrobbespiere [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        No, it was a real suicide. They tried to make an example out of him by prosecuting him relentlessly.

      • JamesGoblin [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Long story short, he was driven to suicide by USA authorities.