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

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This disgusts me.
Aaron Is one of my heroes. He died standing up for something he believed in.
- Imagine if we got him to join Lemmy's side
  Edit: oh shit I didn't know it, RIP
  
  You can’t. Aaron is dead. He killed himself while he being blindsided by the courts for downloading journals and educational materials that were being kept behind paid walls.
  
  F
  
  The dude said died
  
  He would have thought the entire fediverse thing was fantastic.
- I believe that Aaron stood up and didn't grab ankle when confronted with overwhelming force sent from his intellectual and moral inferiors.
  But being short on days to make eternity just we all have a crumple point. And the government's executive branches have found crumpling to be so very easy to do.
- Yeah, but he also believed that child porn should be legal to distribute, so can't say he's my hero even though I respect a lot of his other views.
- His name and a photo of him are right there on that page as a founder though.
  You're disgusted because someone didn't draw him as a cartoon?
  
  Top half is a google search, the bottom is the Reddit website. Notice how the official website says "created by two friends."
  
  Because Reddit was created by two people.
  Aaron was not involved in the starting of Reddit whatsoever. He didn’t come on board until Ycombinator basically forced a merge between Reddit and Infogami 6 months after Reddit launched.
  And he was fired within a year.
  
  Man, you people need to put the rage aside and actually read things other than posts.
  Between November 2005 and January 2006, Reddit merged with Aaron Swartz's company Infogami, and Swartz became an equal owner of the resulting parent company, Not A Bug.[36][37] Ohanian later wrote that instead of labeling Swartz as a co-founder, the correct description is that Swartz's company was acquired by Reddit 6 months after he and Huffman had started.[38]
  
  Was it really 'acquired' as much as 'directed to be merged by Ycombinator investors'? Seems fair to add him as a co-founder since the merger became a new organziation "Not a Bug", and without him the site wouldn't exist in a state that allowed it grow quickly when the time came for Not a Bug to get bought out by Conde Nast in 2006...
  
  Reddit the website already existed at that time though.
  
  Here is a link to what reference 38 since it didn't get included
  https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/93374221685755904?s=20
  ATTN nytimes Steve Huffman & I founded reddit . We acquired Aaron Swartz's company infogami 6mos after we launched.
  
  Acquired implies that they purchased infogami, when in reality they were merged into a new company by ycombinator, which made Aaron a founding partner... When reddit was bought by conde nast, his ownership was paid, and he became an employee, but he didn't like working for conde nast, so he basically got himself fired.
  
  It seems like a philosophical question for you then. Do you consider Elon Musk a founder of Tesla? Similar thing, he was not part of it during the founding technically. I'm trusting the primary source of that tweet I linked.
  
  This is an example of revisionist history on the part of the 'founders' of reddit.
  
  Is it though? Please tell exactly how.
  
  https://sh.itjust.works/comment/1674832
  It smells like he was more involved than Steve Huffman makes him out to be.
  Now don't get me wrong, we might never know, but I know that from here on out we shouldn't trust anyone who is spinning his legacy in any direction. And Reddit is doing exactly that currently.
  
  Aaron referred to himself as a founding partner, and in a reddit AMA, he was asked why he called himself a founder, and he explained how the two companies were merged together and he became a founding partner. He offered Steve Huffman to stop referring to himself as a founding partner at Steve's request. Steve never challenged Aaron's claim while he was alive.

257 comments