Seems to me that the Fediverse is closest thing now that’s working on accomplishing his dreams. His ideals leveraging technology to create a voice for people…
RIP.
I mean, everyone who isn’t a Reddit / X stakeholder will agree that the Fediverse is a good thing.
He would be one
He would have liked it. He was one of the major forces behind RSS which is another great way to let individually owned servers to feed information to many people on their own systems on their own terms. Fediverse is something he would have definitely appreciated.
Swartz
He would have loved it.
I think he’d say, “Please spell my name right.”
I think he’d want more kiddie porn — he had a definite urge in that direction.
I think Aaron Swartz was a complicated guy who did some good but had some enormous issues to say the least, and the ongoing worship of him as a hero is not a good idea.
‘Aaron Swartz is a paedophile’ was not a take I was expecting to read this evening, especially on Lemmy.
Early Reddit shows what a double-edged sword free speech really is. I don’t think Swartz allowed subreddits like r/jailbait to proliferate on Reddit out of a like for the content, but because he was a believer in extreme free speech.
I wasn’t referring to r/jailbait, nor was I implying he was a pedophile. I was clumsily alluding to comments purportedly written by Swartz, supporting peoples’ right to publish, read, and share kiddie porn.
But you know what? I haven’t read Swatrtz’s comments myself, so I’m not sure exactly what he said, and in a few minutes googling I can’t even find what I’d read about whatever Swartz may or may not have written.
So the line about kiddie porn was me talking out of my ass. Never a good idea. Knowing nothing, nothing is what I should’ve said.
He did said some stupid shit along those lines. But he was 14.
There is no later evidence of he supporting that.
“Hmmm ok”
