Gregory's Serverwhile reddit burns, let’s pay a tribute to Aaron Swartz, the brilliant co-founder that co-developed RSS, the technology that made reddit what it was and the technology that will power whatever lives on long after it is gone.
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@tychi ❤️ and, respectfully if I may, some additional time to condemn the MIT officials and federal investigators who needlessly and mercilessly used the expansive Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to _drive to suicide_ one of the most hopeful, intelligent, and prominent contributors to the very idea of the commons - the collective good and tech innovation's responsibility to raise the quality of life for all members of society in a generation. Aaron's dream of information freedom is immortal.   @tychi let's also not forget he was hounded to death by the US Government at the behest of a private organisation (JSTOR) who wanted academic information to be behind a paywall.  @tychi@merveilles. Maybe @davew can shed more light, but it was my understanding, that while he made several contributions, Swartz was not a “co-founder” or even really a co-developer” of RSS. He contributed some to the W3C Dev working group (with many others) in the creation of RSS and later co-wrote the RSS 1.0 spec, building on the prior art. I’m not trying to throw shade on anything he did do, but I just don’t like sweeping credit given anyone without substantial evidence I’ve never seen. @shoq "the brilliant co-founder [of Reddit] that [was a major contributor to] RSS" would be a far better way to word it (Edit: autocorrect) @tychi My favorite quote from Swartz: "I think all censorship should be deplored. My position is that bits are not a bug. That we should create communications technologies that allow people to send whatever they like to each other. And when people put their thumbs on the scale and try to say what can and can’t be sent, we should fight back - both politically through protest and technologically through software." Freedom of speech must be absolute. @paramdeo @tychi you may change your opinion on Swartz when you realise that his position on “freedom of speech” and “anti-censorship” extended to arguing that he had a right to possess and distribute CSAM: https://web.archive.org/web/20031229025933/http:/bits.are.notabug.com/ Swartz was smart and talented, but certain of his opinions are attractive to certain types of creeps, trolls, and fools who built a cult of personality around a dead man. @PennyOaken @paramdeo @tychi it's really challenging, i think, for us to all look back on the early days of the internet and realize that it was all built by talented people who ultimately belonged on the early internet  @tychi Prefer Masto, but also gaining a great love of RSS. Mine is mostly twitter, but I feel like I am more in the steering of that ride. @tychi Wow, I had heard this guys name before but never really looked into him https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz His resume is insane, and it seems pretty clear he was the only one worth a shit at early Reddit. RIP  @hu4d @tychi You might appreciate the documentary “The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ  @tychi@merveilles.town |
@tychi certified Ozymandias moment