Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddit_rewrites_history_by_excluding_aaron_swartz/

by DeusExMachina • 6 years ago

414 276 6 years ago

reddit.com

mysticlabs• 6 years ago

Distasteful.

There would be no Reddit without Aaron.

RIP.

brodouevencode2• 6 years ago

Can we all agree reddit is effectively run from the top down, that moderation at the subreddit level is a joke, that they are even more two faced than Twitter, and that (worse) they’re doing a terrible job of covering it up?

gonzo412• 6 years ago

Yet they have a lot of content. It works if you don't try and build up a profile and just talk crap on the internet.

kchr• 6 years ago

I don't believe GP is debating whether Reddit is popular. People will put their "content" on whatever platform appears "free" and easy to use.

sebmellen20• 6 years ago

Reddit is very clearly not in favour of free speech: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/reddit-bans-thedonald-and-....

Aaron Swartz was very clearly in favour of free speech: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan.

I think the reasons for this are self-evident.

agumonkey5• 6 years ago

This sub being shut has nothing to do with restricting free speech, isn't it ?

sebmellen20• 6 years ago

Shutting down platforms for discussion is quite literally restricting free speech.

If you want to argue Reddit has a right to do that, sure. But that's not the argument.

mard2• 6 years ago

Free speech stands against the financial interests of social media. Reddit is the real estate for ads, and the best value for top global advertisers are safe spaces that are free of controversy. In the end, it's the advertisers that decide what is allowed to be published there.

sebmellen20• 6 years ago

I have no doubt their investors play a role as well. Though some argue the Tencent investment is good for Reddit [0], I can't help but wonder what the nudging looks like behind the scenes.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/tencent-reddit-nononono/

dogma11385• 6 years ago

Unless you’re willing to pay for it you can’t have social media that isn’t a real estate for ads or at least some sort of commercial interest.

Arguably even HN despite being technically a pro-bono side project serves the commercial interest of YC (and possibly others) if it didn’t and especially if it would have a negative impact on them it wouldn’t be around.

And HN is a very niche social media (if you can even call it that) with strict rules.

Anything with wider appeal has to be monetized.

The only monetization we have for the Internet is attention/value extraction from the user base.

secondcoming3• 6 years ago

Having advertisers control online narrative is very worrying and an unintended consequence of Brand Safety. There is no financial reason for reddit or youtube to distribute content they can't monetise, especially if that content is popular.

CapricornNoble• 6 years ago

>it's the advertisers that decide what is allowed to be published there

1. How much would/should advertisers care about their "brand image"? Cancel Culture has taken the long history of corporate boycotts and connected it to a hair-trigger, with massively amplified effects compared to the per capita aggrieved consumers. The leverage that advertisers exert on publishers is a rational risk-avoidance policy in these times of massive outrage-induced revenue losses.

2. How much of the risk-aversion in advertising is related to demographic shifts in the personnel making up the advertising and public relations departments?

mdonahoe• 6 years ago

HN isn’t exactly a bastion of free speech either

sgt2• 6 years ago

How so ? I can't recall any major free speech issues on HN. Being downvoted and having your comment hidden is not exactly something HN can do much about, seeing that it is up to the users.

hnracer2• 6 years ago

While that may be true the HN moderation team does a great job of being balanced and removing all politically charged content and flamebait irrespective of the political views of the poster. They don't have an axe to grind.

It's a very different situation to Reddit where left-leaning political extremism (/r/LateStageCapitalism) is tolerated, but subreddits like t_D are banned.

akvadrako• 6 years ago

Very little actually gets removed from HN.

dan-robertson• 6 years ago

I don’t want to disagree with you but note that those articles are 15 years apart. I think public opinion inside and outside of tech on “free speech” has changed quite a bit over that time. For example I feel like there used to be more of a libertarian bent in tech then as opposed to now.

Is this perhaps an unfair comparison to make considering the general change in opinion over that time?

sebmellen20• 6 years ago

No.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-oV42OMQoE

Freedom of speech is not a small issue. It lies at the core of our civilization, and is unambiguously one of the few things that made "the West" prosper. Aaron makes a very cogent and clear argument for free speech, and its enduring importance.

To arbitrate rights based on public opinion is idiotic and dangerous. This is why we have a constitution.

Of course, Reddit has the right to do this, as a private company, but that's not an argument for doing it.

xevrem• 6 years ago

honestly, i would say the banning of thedonald is clearly a response to The Paradox of Tolerance rather than not supporting free-speech.

you cannot be tolerant of the intolerant if you want free speech to survive.

anticristi2• 6 years ago

TIL: "The Paradox of Tolerance"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

ceilingcorner9• 6 years ago

The Paradox of Tolerance refers to the intolerant using violence to physically make it impossible for the tolerant to exist.

Unclear to me how banning a subreddit is remotely related.

voldacar2• 6 years ago

Thedonald existed on reddit for quite some time and during that period, free speech survived relatively intact. Since the banning of thedonald along with hundreds of other subs, free speech has suffered, not improved, inconsistent with your hypothesis.

Also, "the paradox of tolerance" can be trotted out to justify just about any banning or censoring of someone you don't like

valvar4• 6 years ago

No, the utterly ridiculous "paradox of tolerance" is just a bad cope for people who truly do not believe in free speech. "Free speech" which only applies to your predefined set of approved speech is not free speech, but a monstrous parody of it. The purpose of free speech is to enable dissent, not to affirm the status quo.

kaoD• 6 years ago

In Karl Popper's own words:

I do not imply for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would be most unwise.

superkuh• 6 years ago

All those political bannnings by admins aren't really the big issue (and only relatively recent). The big issue re: reddit and free speech has to do with things that Reddit corp has trouble monetizing and putting ads beside. Sure, some of the bans might come from a partisan political place but the vast majority of reddit admin actions are just that of corporate drones protecting corporate image in order to make more money.

Centralized corporate run proprietary systems will always end up like this. It's the circle of web life.

346792• 6 years ago

"Your intolerance will not be tolerated!"

1k8FJ• 6 years ago

From the aaronsw.com link: "By laying freedom of speech’s provision on top of our reasonable ability to do so, I suggest that freedom of speech could be taken away if providing it became unreasonable. But I think this is the right choice: if people really, seriously started getting hurt because of freedom of speech, it seems right for people to take the privilege away. But, to be honest, I can’t even imagine how that might be possible."

IMHO, this "safety" argument makes up a large part of the argument made by many proponents of modern authoritarianism. This makes me think that Aaron may have supported many of the modern restrictions on free speech, but I certainly don't speak for him. IMHO, many people (particularly in the West) not only "imagine" that it "might" be possible, but actively believe that it is a reality that is already happening. IMHO it is irrelevant whether people get "seriously hurt" because it is a ridiculous metric to optimise for. People get "really, seriously hurt" on a daily basis by: access to sugar, access to alcohol, access to tobacco, the right to bear arms, vehicles.

Edit: s/speach/speech/

DavidVoid11• 6 years ago

If you run a forum and a user is constantly making up lies, harassing other users, and spamming misinformation then I don't think banning them is "free speech" issue.

t_D should have been banned long before it eventually was imo. It actively spread misinformation and hate and made the website worse for other users.

And a question for you: You say that Reddit is not in favor of free speech because it banned subs like t_D, but t_D and similar subs were banned anyone who questioned the narrative that was being pushed by those subreddits' moderators. So is it not fair to say that t_D (and similar subs) were very clearly not in favor of free speech either?

sebmellen20• 6 years ago

Perhaps. I know that a number of objectively hateful subreddits were not banned because they were hateful of people "in the majority" (whatever that means).

An archived copy of Reddit's "Account and Community Restrictions" from the time of the ban reads as such [0]:

While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate.

The question here veers into the territory of whether Reddit is a "publisher" or "platform". Their editorial decision to ban certain kinds of loosely-defined "hate" seems to clearly point to them being an editorializing publisher of content. This, in addition to their editing of user's posts criticizing their core team [1] and other such egregious acts.

There's no compelling reason for me to believe Reddit acted in good faith.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200701001008/https://www.reddi...

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reddit-ceo-edits-user-comment...

throwaway_gdc3• 6 years ago

There is still plenty of racism on reddit. Look up any thread about Indian, Chinese and Romani (Gypsy) people.

The Reddit admins only goes after racism when the target is people contemporary liberal media sympathize with.

They only banned anti-black racist subreddits and users after the 2015 Charleston church shooting. They only banned anti-Semitic subreddits and users after the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. They only banned Islamophobic subreddits and users after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.

k33n4• 6 years ago

I’m amused when people post flat out lies like this. T_d was a positive sub that loved Trump. They were pretty “rah rah” about him. It drove the anti-Trump people crazy, which is why it was banned. That’s the only reason. Just go cruise the comments on /r/politics for proof. They call for actual bloodshed and for the death of Trump and his supporters every single day.

TDS is very real. It causes people such as yourself to parrot flat out lies that have no basis in reality — and you seem to actually feel good about it. It’s bizarre and I suspect history will look back on it as a mass hysteria event.

itsthewrongspe• 6 years ago

If misinformation and hate are why t_D was banned, why are r/latestagecapitalism (openly hateful and violent / ban dissenters),r/blackpeopletwitter (openly racist, spread misinformation), r/socialistrifleassociation (openly fomenting revolution) allowed to exist?

Reddit just bans speech it doesn't like. It has nothing to do with hate -- only who you hate. Hating conservatives, Republicans, Whites? That's all fine on reddit. Hell, it's fine here. How long will this comment last?

hnracer2• 6 years ago

Which is what /r/LateStageCapitalism, and many other subreddits, do. Only it's allowed because they are not right wing.

The anti-free speech claim is made not by judging the ban of t_D in isolation, but by looking at how their policies are selectively enforced across their platform in order to silence right-wing opinions and perspectives. In particular, support for Trump. A sub like /r/politics, dedicated primarily to anti-Trump content, is fine though, even if their users are wishing him death after getting COVID and are actively promulgating conspiracy theories.

bborud• 6 years ago

It can’t be a free speech issue. Reddit is not part of government.

ethanwillis4• 6 years ago

Then why did they ban /r/Holodomor? Ideological motivation.

raxxorrax2• 6 years ago

They were not as much in favor of free speech as they often proclaim. It is probably mostly due to reactionary behavior. I think the banning was a mistake, they were also discriminated against on political grounds.

If you do that because you think it necessary I would at least expect results.

082349872349872• 6 years ago

As they say in the Belt, "inyalowda tili tenya fit detim fo bang fit xitim" (They own the past to control the present).

ameen• 6 years ago

For the uninitiated, this is from the sci-fi series, “The Expanse” which has found a home on Amazon Prime. Highly recommended for those interested in an interplanetary sci-fi.

DevOopsEngineer• 6 years ago

It started out as kick-ass book series. But yes, the TV show is pretty good too.

losvedir• 6 years ago

I thought it really was founded by those two, and written in Lisp at that. Then YC hooked them up with Swartz and his big thing was rewriting in python. (And maybe there was some contention about this? I forget, but I seem to recall some drama at the time about his contributions.)

It was a long time ago, though, so I might be misremembering. In any case, I'm fairly certain Swartz did join after the fact, but I'm not sure if he joined with the title of co-founder or not.

abdullahkhalids• 6 years ago

In Aaron Swartz's own words from May 2007

One of the points of the merger was that we would all call ourselves co-founders, so that's what I've been doing. I'd be happy to stop if that's what Steve and Alexis wanted, though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...

This comment by spez is also interesting https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_th...

It seems AS was given the title of co-founder by contract, but perhaps, the language was vague enough or they didn't fear retaliation so Steve and Alexis decided they didn't want to acknowledge him as co-founder.

Edit: here are some more details: https://observer.com/2011/07/rumors-acquisitions-did-reddit-... including comments by PG.

abc-xyz• 6 years ago

From Alexis Ohanian interview in 2006:

Paul wanted to give Aaron Swartz, another YC founder, a birthday gift in November. More than anything else, Aaron wanted co-founder so Paul suggested the “merger”. Merger is probably a bit hyperbolic for what actually happened, Aaron basically moved in with us and we made him a co-founder.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070823200504/http://startupstor...

NateEag• 6 years ago

As I recall, Aaron was doing his own startup through YC (Infogami).

Paul Graham introduced him to the Reddit guys and I believe suggested they merge Reddit and Infogami.

As part of that merger, Aaron gained the title "cofounder", IIRC.

This is backed up by comments in that Reddit thread, FWIW.

Viliam1234• 6 years ago

I'd be happy to stop if that's what Steve and Alexis wanted, though.

Seems like they do, now.

mard2• 6 years ago

I found an Observer article[1] from 2011 that gives some more insight. It looks to me that Aaron could indeed be considered a Reddit co-founder. However, Huffman and Ohanian may have felt threatened by being associated to the criminal later on, so they went with a new narrative.

[1] https://observer.com/2011/07/rumors-acquisitions-did-reddit-...

lawnchair_larry• 6 years ago

Every time this comes up, they have always been pretty clear that they felt he didn’t earn his spot and was MIA for most of the early work. So he joined after they started reddit, making him not a cofounder, and he abdicated his responsibilities after joining and being told by PG to give him a cofounder title, which they weren’t in a great position to decline. It’s hard to set the record straight here without denigrating someone, so they were always in an awkward position when this came up.

I don’t know anyone involved, but that’s the impression I got after seeing this topic beat to death on HN and reddit over the last 10ish years.

I doubt they cared at all that he was charged years after he left.

neilv• 6 years ago

Yeah, I think it's accurate to say "Reddit was founded in 2005 by two college friends."

But some acknowledgement of the other early people, including Aaron Swartz (who I believe was nominally considered a co-founder), might've been appropriate.

What was the context of the graphic to which some people are objecting?

In that context, is the most important story what two people did alone initially (or with the help of YC and others)? Or the eventual cofounders of record? Or everyone who was influential/formative/contributor to a given milestone of Reddit? I don't know.

vbezhenar• 6 years ago

If someone's not aware about Aaron's story, I suggest to read Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

ObsoleteNerd• 6 years ago

And/or watch the documentary, which you can watch legally and free on Archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaro...

pulkitsh1234• 6 years ago

This hurts so much, Goes on to show the lengths people will go to portray themselves as being politically correct.

Whenever I get thoughts of doing something to change the "system", I just end up getting discouraged and disheartened to the core because of what happened with Aaron.

The one thing which stood out to me was that this guy spent time interning in government offices just to understand how it operated from inside out.

I have enormous respect for people who stop being being keyboard warriors and actually head into the swaps to understand how difficult and complex a situation is, instead of just intellectualising and theory-crafting about society based on information available online.

Recursing• 6 years ago

This comment by spez seems to show that Reddit never considered him a founder though, the title was given to him by PG https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_th...

andreareina• 6 years ago

Old mobile version: https://i.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddit...

vaccinator• 6 years ago

Old version: https://ns.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddi...

squarefoot3• 6 years ago

Just the one question: alternatives?

Not necessarily already established and crowded platform, but also free and open, privacy friendly ones that can be slowly brought to self sustaining levels by enthusiasts, so that they can attract normal users.

foepys• 6 years ago

Some users migrated to alternatives when reddit began mass-banning subs for the first time.

All turned into cesspools full of nazis and fascists focused almost exclusively on hate speech, or died due to inactivity.

squarefoot3• 6 years ago

True. That's the kind of "freedom of speech" I would happily renounce to in any public platform. Let them spread their idiocy in private form by themselves alone.

wcerfgba• 6 years ago

https://tildes.net/

DarthGhandi• 6 years ago

The last 3 times I've tried to go back to tildes it seems like a massive political circlejerk where dissent is not tolerated.

Is there somewhere without politics being jammed down your throat in every thread?

nhylated• 6 years ago

http://voat.co/

DavidVoid11• 6 years ago

It's only a good alternative if you're looking to hang out with people who really like to use the n-word and who believe that everything is Jewish conspiracy.

wolfgke2• 6 years ago

Just the one question: alternatives?

Voat: https://voat.co/

seattledev3• 6 years ago

Chapo.chat is a popular one for leftists that formed after the chapo subreddits were censored/banned a couple months ago. Fair warning: most HN users aren't going to like it because they advocate for things like food and shelter and healthcare for everyone, no matter what

swebs5• 6 years ago

Most HN users aren't going to like it because it is for far-left "tankies" that promote violence. One of the top posts right now is:

Some people deserve their heads to be displayed on spikes

squarefoot3• 6 years ago

As a leftist myself I'd be inclined more to this one, although I wouldn't condone any violence that is not for self defense, nor attacking anyone just because of their ideals - unless their ideals consist in endorsing the opposite of the above. My take on food and shelter and (basic) healthcare for all is that I agree until this can pose a (real, proven) problem for others. Judging from current military expenses and top manager leaves, I'd dare to say that there's enough wealth out there to guarantee most of that to the entire planet.

robswc• 6 years ago

I don't think anyone associated with y combinator or for that matter, enjoy posting on here would be welcome there.

I would even wager a large chunk would happily wish death on people here for "perpetuating a broken system" or some odd thing.

Knugens• 6 years ago

Well I would definitely stay away from Voat. Unless you're a right-wing extremist who thinks jews control the world and that science is a lie.

Since HN is mostly meant for developers and people with science degrees, I guess the anti-science and anti-intellectual part is a big dealbreaker.

approxim8ion• 6 years ago

Lemmy [1] is still in beta but is open source, self-hostable, and very usable already, and has federation with ActivityPub on the roadmap. There is a main instance up at [2] with a number of offshoots already.

1: https://github.com/LemmyNet

2: https://dev.lemmy.ml

sbmthakur2• 6 years ago

ruqqus.com

It's in beta though.

Twixes• 6 years ago

That user base basically looks like Voat. As in, not pleasant.

ceilingcorner9• 6 years ago

Reddit today is the opposite of what it was in the beginning. Unsurprising that they’d write out Swartz in their quest to be a friendly corporate face.

Alas, a new competitor will replace it soon. Virtually no one has brand loyalty to Reddit and their audience is becoming narrower and narrower.

mantap2• 6 years ago

Considering that Reddit's own popularity was boosted by Digg's collapse due to unpopular changes and dysfunction, you'd think that Reddit would be more aware of the risks of pursuing an antagonistic relationship with their users.

Krasnol2• 6 years ago

But their success proves that they don't have to care...

I mean seriously this "Diggs past will come for you"-line is being repeated for years but it's not happening.

Meanwhile "alternatives" come up and and become irrelevant or nests of hate.

ChrisKnott3• 6 years ago

Do you have a source for "their audience is becoming narrower and narrower"?

f69281c2• 6 years ago

I think they meant ideologically

blueboo• 6 years ago

I think this is wishful thinking. Reddit at its inception was sock puppet-boosted discussion of atheism and coding. Every choice its leaders have been made have been in support of further growth, not some philosophical ideal.

It’s now one of the most vibrant discussion forums on the internet. It’s been growing faster than it can manage, but that’s been the case for years. Hostage to a brittle moderation model that doesn’t scale, certain discussions can’t be safely or productively had at its scale.

It’s a practical reality...in support of further growth. For every open internet advocate that abandons it in disgust, another dozen grandmas and teens register and download the app.

Whatever the case, I do hope you’re right and a competitor finds a way to do this better.

datalus• 6 years ago

Do you have any sources to back this up? Particulary the hordes of grandmothers & teens downloading the app in record numbers?

ratww6• 6 years ago

I don't think so.

If anything, Reddit is getting bigger. In my circle nobody knew what it was five years ago. Now it has effectively become mainstream, and is being (positively) quoted on TV, etc.

This is actually the second time it happens. Ten years ago people also claimed that "Reddit is dying". It wasn't, it was just changing its core audience of technical users to a broader one. And now it is doing it again.

ceilingcorner9• 6 years ago

Mainstream name recognition isn’t particularly indicative of success. In my experience, Reddit is slowly eliminating anything that doesn’t conform to a west coast American view of the world.

Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is coming online and has a different view of things. We’re starting to see this with India and the EU. Best case scenario for Reddit is a link aggregator for a very narrow group, unless they turn off the hyper-partisan path and return to their roots.

dehrmann• 6 years ago

I remember when people were embarrassed to admit they're on reddit. When my not-at-all-nerdy college-football-playing personal trainer casually mentioned it, I realized just how much it'd grown.

noelsusman• 6 years ago

Meanwhile in reality Reddit had 430 million active monthly users last year, 30% more than Twitter.

ceilingcorner9• 6 years ago

Does anyone actually believe these numbers? Reddit seems half filled with bots and alt accounts to me.

drno123• 6 years ago

As a non-American, I lost track of this case - was there an investigation into prosecutors who went after Aaron? Are these people still prosecuting other people?

watwut5• 6 years ago

Yes why not. And I am not sure why you think they broke rules or for something that would be seen as job losing offense by law community. Even defense lawyers claimed this is how things are done.

nullc2• 6 years ago

Ortiz is no longer in public service, she's now a partner at a private lawfirm.

Some people believe the backlash for her spectacular over prosecution in this case prevented her from running for Governor.

meroes• 6 years ago

I don't view young college educated founders of massive social media sites to be a thing to boast about any longer.

Also technically the slide is correct, they bought/absorbed Aaron's company iirc - although there wouldn't be Reddit without that act.

It's blatant propaganda from a propaganda company though so what's new.

quantumwoke• 6 years ago

I'm sitting here crying at my computer screen. Everything the early pioneers of the internet fought for, freedom of speech, lack of censorship, open discussion of radical ideas, is being destroyed. The destruction of Aaron's legacy is just the latest in a long list of final straws that is eroding my trust and hope for the future. Dark day today indeed.

BLKNSLVR• 6 years ago

Build something worthy of your ideals. Join a group that's pushing in a direction you can agree with and contribute in any way you can.

Legacies exist to be destroyed because popularity and money create change from both inside and out, and it takes a very rare human will to resist selling out one's ideals in the face of amounts of money one has only ever dreamed about.

The ideals aren't dead, the old places built upon them are dying under weight of mainstream popularity. Find or make a new underground.

thecupisblue• 6 years ago

Then follow his steps and fight for the future.

callmeal• 6 years ago

For those not familiar with Aaron's writing, first read this:

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall

Then continue here:

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve

philips4350• 6 years ago

Wow thank you so much for this, I have only read the first chapter of the second link and I see so many similarities to what I am going through or thinking.

ffpip• 6 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20180731111417/https://www.reddi...

I don't think he was ever on that page

slippyd• 6 years ago

That’s largely because that page was created in 2018.

He was, however, listed as the 3rd co-founder on Reddit’s CrunchBase page as of 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140815155953/http://www.crunch...

li4ick2• 6 years ago

I blocked most of Reddit (also, deleted my account) when I say this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSVqoW1rz6w&t=850

bosswipe• 6 years ago

I don't think Swartz was an actual reddit co-founder. Wikipedia says pg gave him the title, whatever that means.

People need to cool it with the conspiracy theories about everything all the time.

seattledev3• 6 years ago

He was in fact, by the language of his contract, a cofounder. He had the legal right to call himself as such even if spez and co are assholes and pretended he wasn't

cung• 6 years ago

It seems to me that the same thing that happened to Reddit is happening to Hacker News now.

I've seen an uptick of misleading titles, which make you question what is real.

Another trend I've noticed is an increase in pro-drug/pro-medication posts, which aim to frame life's challenges as something that need medication.

stingraycharles• 6 years ago

This is honestly not something I can relate to. HN has always had a policy of using titles of the articles themselves, and apart from a small subset of them being editorialized by the mods (typically because they’re misleading!), this is still the case.

And I haven’t seen a noticeable uptake in pro-drug/pro-medication posts compared to, say, a decade ago, and frankly I don’t understand how that has anything to do with this.

toyg2• 6 years ago

Parent poster might be reacting to the last few days, which really did have an uncharacteristically high number of very busy threads about psychiatric medication. Hopefully it’s just one of those “phases” HN goes through week-in week-out.

nullc2• 6 years ago

To the extent that this is a history rewrite, it's not a new one: them not referring to him as a co-founder (and getting some flak for it) was going on more than ten years ago while Aaron was still alive to participate in the discussions.

qqj• 6 years ago

reddit morphed from a fun place to visit to an absolute cesspool of the internet. With popularity came the idiot masses, and like locust they decimated the comments section and post so much inane content it’s no longer possible to find anything worthwhile. That in itself would be enough to bring a site like reddit down, but then the management also made two crucial mistakes: first, they redesigned the site and made it completely unusable (especially on mobile), and then they decided to push social agenda and turned the site from a neutral, user content centric, free-speech oriented site to a left-wing sjw haven, which served to further lower quality of content and comments.

So it’s not surprising at all that the same people who think they have the right to push social agenda they consider “correct”, also choose to remove the name of a “notorious” co-founder from the records. Personally I find the behavior of reddit’s management abhorrent and want nothing to do with them or anything they have a hand in.

actuator• 6 years ago

I hope we get a good alternative to Reddit. Their governance issues aside, their disdain for web and open systems have made me not use the platform anymore. It has been sad to see the platform become worse.

djsumdog6• 6 years ago

The trouble is those platforms just attract all the people who get banned from Reddit, and then you get this:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/voat-what-went-wrong/

ss64• 6 years ago

Reddit was founded in June 2005. Aaron founded Infogami, Infogami merged with Reddit in November 2005. When Conde Nast bought Reddit in 2006 they each got one third of the money. The other founders then fired Aaron in 2007. http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html

cies14• 6 years ago

So they are technically correct. It shows though that --given the near martyr status Aaron has-- he is left out of the picture. Reddit are no rebbels, at least not anymore or "less so nowadays".

I have most hopes for Lemmy[0] as a place for the more rebbel Redditors to seek refuge. Really cool project, advancing really nicely.

[0] https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

skinnymuch• 6 years ago

Chapo.chat linked by someone else uses Lemmy. As a product, Lemmy seems pretty good.

doe88• 6 years ago

If I remember correctly, he had written a quite modern webserver in Python for its time et it became the basis of Reddit, or something like that. Anyway, I've always associated Aaron to Reddit, from the start.

toyg2• 6 years ago

Shows people can hold grudges for decades, grudges that even death won’t heal. And of course it’s disappointing that two “liberal champions” were always so eager to distance themselves from one of the few true victims of “the system”.

swebs5• 6 years ago

This comment by spez is also interesting

For what its worth, Spez was caught abusing his admin access to secretly edit comments in the past, including other people's comments who he disagreed with politically. I would doubt any comment posted on reddit where Spez has stake in, as he might have just changed the story sometime down the line.

ChrisKnott3• 6 years ago

This is a very misleading characterization of what happened.

It was not secret, it was on one occasion, and it was to make a light-hearted joke at the expense of /r/The_Donald users who were calling him a paedophile.

It was a massive error of judgement, but you have tried to make out it was some kind of on-going political subterfuge.

swebs5• 6 years ago

But that may have well just been the first incident where he was caught red handed. Who knows how many other incidents he got away with? I have no faith in the integrity of reddit administration, especially Spez. The fact that he wasn't fired immediately means reddit staff does not take these issues seriously.

dang• 6 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24678138.

tomhoward• 6 years ago

Funnily enough, in Aaron's 2007 comment explaining the basis for him to be called a "co-founder" [1], the top reply is someone berating him as "disingenuous" for calling himself that [2].

Note that on the Wikipedia page for Chris Slowe [3], another person who joined Reddit very early on, he is also described as a co-founder, but he doesn't appear on the About page, even though there's been no public falling out between him and Steve/Alexis (he stayed at Reddit post-acquisition, then jumped to Hipmunk with Steve, and is now back at Reddit).

The thing is, for any company that makes it big, there will be ambiguity over whether particular people are considered founders vs early employees vs key people post a merger or acquisition.

But for the sake of the origin story, the simplest is the best: two longtime friends wanted to start a company together, so they sought out Paul Graham, got into the first YC batch, started working on Reddit and got it to its early growth and success, then continued on-and-off running/directing the company even through to this day; it makes sense to call those guys the founders.

None of this detracts from Aaron's legacy. He achieved a huge amount in his life, and his time/role at Reddit seems minor compared to other things he did.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Slowe

blfr• 6 years ago

I was looking at my resume feeling real fresh today

They rewrite history, I don't believe in yesterday

https://genius.com/Kanye-west-gorgeous-lyrics

alexandr1us• 6 years ago

Reddit went full commie since about 3 years. It became super annoying to get hundreds of down votes because you are not a leftist bot

Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder

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