2410
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] thesmokingman@programming.dev 377 points 1 year ago

Swartz wasn’t involved in the origins of Reddit. He got involved when Y Combinator combined his company with Reddit (something along those lines?). He was not an actual founder, just an early influencer. In many ways, decoupling him from the shitshow that Ohanian and Huffman have engendered is a good thing.

This is very similar to the argument of Musk being a founder of Tesla.

[-] Gramba@kbin.social 150 points 1 year ago

Also Swartz had a section of his homepage defending child pornography as "not necessarily abuse" and that possession & distribution of it should be a first amendment right. He also advocated for a violent overthrow of the US government. Here's a cache of one instance of him defending it. Aaron did some really great tech stuff, but he's not a person that should be regarded as some hero as he had a lot of views that were misguided at best.

[-] HeavenAndHell@lemmy.world 71 points 1 year ago

In the US, it is illegal to possess or distribute child pornography, apparently because doing so will encourage people to sexually abuse children.

This is absurd logic. Child pornography is not necessarily abuse. Even if it was, preventing the distribution or posession of the evidence won't make the abuse go away. We don't arrest everyone with videotapes of murders, or make it illegal for TV stations to show people being killed.

I don't know if that's the reason CP is actually banned, but his logic is even worse and dumber by a mile.

[-] Syrc@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

I mean, the article linked in that page (albeit horribly long due to useless info) does raise a point against current laws on viewing illegal material.

But sharing it? Yeah that’s a bit of a stretch. Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.

[-] Wollff@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.

That particular argument doesn't hold water. We don't generally subscribe to this kind of argument.

The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal.

CP is likely to inspire some people toward child abuse. Child abuse is illegal. Thus the distribution of CP should be illegal.

We don't do this anywhere else.

Descriptions of non consesnual violence are likely to inspire some people toward non consensual violence. Non consensual violence is illegal. Thus the distribution of all descriptions of non consensual violence should be illegal.

If we take this seriously, we have to ban action movies. And I am not even getting into the whole porn debate...

No, the only valid reason for banning the distribution of child porn which I can think of, lies in the rights of the victims. The victims were abused, and their image was used without their consent. Without them even possibly being able to give consent to any of that, or the distribution that follows.

So anyone who shares child porn, is guaranteed to share a piece of media which shows someone being subjected to a crime, while they couldn't possibly give consent for that to be recorded, or shared publicly. Making it illegal to share someone being a victim of a crime, without them being able to consent to that being shared, is a reasoning which has far fewer problems than what you propose here.

[-] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You raise a few valid points, but the problem with the action film thing is that it is fiction, and thus protected by free speech rights.

That's actually the main argument against lolicon being illegal: depictions of other crimes, including heinous ones like murder and rape, are not illegal.

Ultimately it comes down to inconsistency in the law, and sensationalism makes it very difficult to discuss rationally.

[-] Yendor@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

That particular argument doesn't hold water. We don't generally subscribe to this kind of argument.

The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal.

CP is likely to inspire some people toward child abuse. Child abuse is illegal. Thus the distribution of CP should be illegal.

We don't do this anywhere else.

Yes we do. Plenty of stuff is banned by federal law. Snuff films, for the same reason as CP/CSAM. Obscene pornography (stuff showing abuse or degradation, even if it’s just acting) isn’t illegal to posses, but it is illegal to buy, distribute or carry across state lines. Ivory is illegal, unless you have a certificate proving it is from pre-1989. These are all banned to stop demand.

And that’s not even getting started Americas long history of banning books.

[-] Wollff@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Yes we do. Plenty of stuff is banned by federal law.

Do you get what I mean? If you do, why are you being so overly literal here?

Snuff films, for the same reason as CP/CSAM

And action movies are not. Neither are horror or slasher movies. Neither is porn. Even though each of them might (or might not) inspire and incentivize illegal deeds.

It is not a general principle we subscribe to. It is enforced very selectively, and only in areas that we find most shocking. Which is understandable, but neither reasonable, nor consistent. I don't know about you, but I think criminal law should be based on principles which are reasonable and consistent.

One such principle may be: "Media which may inspire illegal action, should be illegal themselves"

But that's not consistently enforced, but selectively, limited by criteria which seem dubious at best.

This is what I mean, when I say "This argument does not hold water"

These are all banned to stop demand.

And that's the interesting question: Why only these things, and nothing else? There is plenty of stuff out there which may inspire people toward illegal action, from real world depictions of violence, to action movies.

[-] Syrc@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal

To me it’s more like “All situations where committing illegal actions could bring a positive feedback to the perpetrator should be avoided”.

Allowing CP to be shared, and thus sold/hosted on for-profit sites creates a market for it, and makes abusing children an actual profession. That’s not ok and already a talking point against the current, legal, porn industry.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] CaptainEffort@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Yes, that’s why CP is banned. It being distributed and sold encourages the further making of it, thus leading to more instances of children being abused.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 58 points 1 year ago

That website has been the same since it’s first archive on 2002-12-17. Aaron Swartz had just turned 16 a month earlier. I know I had some seriously immature opinions at that age. As well, that website was still up as of this January, a decade since his passing. http://www.aaronsw.com/ is also still up, and it doesn’t look like it was updated since 2002 either. Neither is any of this referenced on his wikipedia page, nor on it’s talk page. This feels like such a reach…

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] elkaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 1 year ago

I sure love it when people use a single opinion to smear a person's entire legacy, he was great not only for the tech stuff but his stance on scientific articles piracy and a lot of other stuff too.

I won't say that that his opinion on cp is a great one (there is no doubt at least for me that distribution should always be illegal), but he wrote it as a 16 years old and it was guided due to his extremism for free speech over the internet, regardless, it's not like he himself was an evil person distributing child pornography, to paint him as an overall shitty person for an opinion like this seems idiotic imo

This is q bit personal and maybe slightly unrelated, but it reminds me of when people defend non-offending pedos (as in they are attracted to children because yhey are born that way but have not offended, nor groomed, nor harmed a child) saying the stigma should be erased because that would allow us to actually help this people who constantly hide it, therefore reducing the harm to children. This position has unironically got me called a pedophile and a lot of horrible stuff over the internet, and I would draw parallels to this situation, no matter how you slice it this opinion should not be used singlehandedly to state he is someone that shouldn't be respected. Especially since he is not defending the harm itself being done to children (as in the production of CP) which would still be a crime under his view. (Although distribution of course grows the market so it's idiotic not to go after that too), but as I said, it's a bad opinion but that doesn't make him a bad person.

[-] Gramba@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago

I'm not saying Aaron was 100% bad, my point is that I don't really think he's some modern-day hero either. And I've already replied to someone that dismissed the his child porn views as a forgotten childhood comment. It wasn't merely a poorly thought out comment he made at 16 and forgot about, he maintained and edited that page until his death, even restoring it after a server crash deleted it.

If you want to celebrate his tech contributions or his views on scientific piracy I'm all for it. I just don't agree with this view of him getting spread that he's some hero co-founder of Reddit that is being unfairly erased from history when that's inaccurate at best. He's just a dude that did some great things, had some great views, had some really really shit views, and never gave a shit about reddit.

[-] entropicshart@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

FYI your link is broken and is just leading to the archive home page

[-] Gramba@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Sorry I'm brand new here. The link I put is https://web.archive.org/web/20130116210225/http://bits.are.notabug.com/ which loads an archived copy of his homepage as it's no longer online since his death. The link loads properly for me on all my devices, even when i click it from my comment. Did I perhaps format the link incorrectly here and that's why it's not working? I know it's a bit of an odd url format that the wayback machine uses.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Still not formatted correctly on memmy. Let’s see if this works…

https://web.archive.org/web/20130116210225/http://bits.are.notabug.com/

looks like a bug in lemmy or certain clients. Probably to do with the double absolute URL’s in archive links…

[-] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Your link isn’t working for me

[-] Gramba@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

It's a link to an archive of his http://bits.are.notabug.com site on the wayback machine as his site is no longer online. It's working for me on my PC and my phone. I can take a screenshot and share it if your browser is unable to load the wayback machine?

[-] theodewere@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

i heard that Ohanian and Huffman have people out there trying to suggest that he was a pedo or some shit, what about that

[-] Gramba@kbin.social 53 points 1 year ago

I'd say you can read Aaron's own defense of child porn on his website and draw your own conclusions. If you're trying to suggest that I'm somehow defending Ohanian and Huffman, far from it. I can think Swartz shouldn't be considered a modern folk hero and still not like the other two.

Huffman was a mod for the jailbait subreddit.

Here's an interview with Ohanian after CNN reported on the jailbait subreddit which caused Reddit to close it down. Alexis blames CNN for "making up jibber jabber" and the children who allowed images of their abuse to be posted online.

This type of view was apparently support by all the original Reddit folks, just because Swartz has a better reputation now doesn't mean he didn't also share those views.

[-] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

He was 16 years old when he posted this. The statement is disgusting and not really defensable by itself, but I wonder if this was a dumb naive teenage take, or if he still thought this way up until he died.

I also don't know if he was actually a pedophile, or if he just thought freedom of information on the web should be taken to the extreme. I would lean towards the latter since he seemed to have a relationship with an older woman at some point, but I don't think I will ever truly know for sure.

[-] Gramba@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

That archive date I linked is from shortly after his death. If you go through the various archive dates you can see that he made changes to the page over the years. He added the bit about wanting a violent overthrow of the government when he was 18 or 19. In 2007 when he would have been 21, the archive just shows a note that he had a server crash and the site is gone but you can email him if you want a copy of it. By the time he was 22 he'd put the site back online. He made more edits visible through the following years until his death. So yeah we don't know his thoughts but we do he continued to maintain that page, even choosing to restore it after a server crash, until the point he killed himself. It's not as though it's an online post he made as a kid and forgot about.

Thank you for the clarification there. I was not aware of the history of that cringey page. I had no idea that he kept it up and running like that.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 13 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=OXZYvrue1BE

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Bak@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I thought the mod thing was because you used to be able to be modded for a subreddit without your approval

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] zer0@thelemmy.club 5 points 1 year ago

These two run a rigged company plagued with censorship that over the years collaborated with all sort of scum including the chinese government. I really wouldn't trust what they have to say

load more comments (41 replies)
load more comments (80 replies)
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
2410 points (97.0% liked)

Reddit

17443 readers
20 users here now

News and Discussions about Reddit

Welcome to !reddit. This is a community for all news and discussions about Reddit.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules


Rule 1- No brigading.

**You may not encourage brigading any communities or subreddits in any way. **

YSKs are about self-improvement on how to do things.



Rule 2- No illegal or NSFW or gore content.

**No illegal or NSFW or gore content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-Reddit posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



:::spoiler Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS