Aaron is no longer considered as cofounder by reddit. He fought for free speech.

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This is true but also old news from what I remember they took him off that page a long time ago. Reddit has been heading toward it’s inevitable demise ever since Aaron passed. Glad I finally left for good.
- Wait. Back up.
  I haven't been embroiled in the drama that is Reddit and it's founding.... But the "c-level" guy that was basically the free speech advocate of the admin team.... Died?
  This explains a lot actually.
  
  He hung himself after being prosecuted by the federal authorities for academic journal article piracy. He was trying to make journal articles available to the masses and was facing life in prison for it. This was many years ago.
  
  What a world we live in
  
  He was too good for this world.
  
  He also defended child porn and advocated for making it legal.
  Maybe don’t idolize people.
  
  Wasn't he like 16 years old when he posted that? I certainly said some pretty stupid stuff when I was that age.
  
  There’s saying stupid things as a teenager, and then there’s defending child porn.
  I’ve said a lot of stupid stuff as a teenager too but never felt like saying child porn should be legal or that it wasn’t abuse. That’s something that you should know by 16.
  
  It's absolutely insane.
  
  He died for what he believed in, I suppose. I wonder if Richard Stallman had any comment on it, since he's kind of the OG digital freedom of information guy.
  
  You could email him and ask. I've heard he answers a lot of the emails random people send
  
  I could. I'm sure he's doing far more important work for the freedom of information, I wouldn't want to distract him from that important work.
  Also I'm sure I could come up with something far more interesting to ask if I did.
  
  he died in 2013. his involvement with reddit ended officially in 2007, but even by his own admission he stopped any involvement with the company when it was acquired by conde nast - he was part of reddit for less than a year.
  his death really doesn't have anything to do with reddit's current trajectory
  
  That's good to know; even if he hadn't died; he still wouldn't have had anything to do with it. May he rest in peace.
  
  Yeah he was arrested for downloading a massive amount of documents/articles off JSTOR with a computer hidden in an on-campus closet. He ended up committing suicide before going to trial for it
  
  I guarantee to you that there is not a SINGLE researcher that doesn't use scihub to get articles. This is so fucking unfair, I had no idea his death was due to this

257 comments