Steve Huffman is pissing all over Aaron Schwartz’s grave, and completely abandoning the ideals that was once a foundation of Reddit. Reddit was originally open source, Aaron died in 2013, and by 2017, Reddit had abandoned the open source / community philosophy entirely.
This is the main reason I haven’t been back to reddit since this shit began. All of this goes against the original ethos of Reddit that made me join and is a disrespect to all of the people who made reddit what it is. It disrespects the users, the volunteer moderators, the app developers, and the old employees. Most especially, though, it disrespects Aaron and, if I’m not mistaken, Alexis.
I remember when Ellen Pao was the nightmare and spez wasn’t yet perceived as the fuck he actually is. Different times, I guess the devil you know is better sometimes. Otherwise you get spez, fuck spez.
Based on interviews since (so obvious grain of salt) as well as her background (keyword “her”), Pao was likely set up to clean up the image a bit and then get thrown under the bus for such negative actions as… banning revenge porn and blatant hate subs. She gets a nice payday and Reddit gets a bogeyman.
Its pretty standard for start up cultures and “tech” companies. Bring in an outsider to do the unpopular stuff and then have the founder/golden boy come back to “right the ship”.
What she did was OK IMO. Banning revenge porn is absolutely necessary. Probably a legal requirement in almost all countries. The rage against Pau seemed to be from extremists who wanted reddit to allow discrimination, bigotry, racism, and everything in that vein.
The resulting uncensored Voat fork of reddit, was a completely useless cesspool.
I’ve seen a Lemmy server (feddit.dk) require posts and comments to be legal (probably for the country of the server). Which in my opinion is obvious. It should be a minimum conduct requirement for a social network anyway.
Absolutely this!! Thank you for posting this, I had forgotton Aaron’s name and was unable to find him when this all had started. Can’t believe it’s been 10 years
Yes, it makes me sad, that many of the people who said “Never forget”, kind of forgot anyways. I’m glad I could refresh your memory, it’s as relevant as ever IMO.
Intellectual property law is such a farce. It’s wild that he was on the hook for THAT hefty of a prison sentence just because he downloaded academic articles which should on principle automatically be in the public domain.
Absolutely, the way he was treated was criminal IMO. It’s horrendous that such practically illegal law enforcement isn’t held accountable. They twisted everything against him, and ignored all his rights completely. Secret service behaved like mobsters, and their accusations were complete bogus.
I’m so happy I live in a country where the law and enforcement is much more sensible. IP law is still important, but they won’t destroy you for breaking it.
Steve Huffman is pissing all over Aaron Schwartz’s grave, and completely abandoning the ideals that was once a foundation of Reddit. Reddit was originally open source, Aaron died in 2013, and by 2017, Reddit had abandoned the open source / community philosophy entirely.
Never forget Aaron Schwartz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
This is the main reason I haven’t been back to reddit since this shit began. All of this goes against the original ethos of Reddit that made me join and is a disrespect to all of the people who made reddit what it is. It disrespects the users, the volunteer moderators, the app developers, and the old employees. Most especially, though, it disrespects Aaron and, if I’m not mistaken, Alexis.
Alexis is no stranger to disruptive unpopular decisions either:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Ohanian#Victoria_Taylor_firing
He did fight for open internet back in 2010, but it seems he is mostly a finance/corporate guy now, seems he is a bit of a mixed bag.
Thanks for pointing this out. I didn’t realize he was involved in Veronica’s firing.
He must also have been part of Reddit abandoning open source. I don’t think they could make such a fundamental move without him.
As a computer nerd I never knew about a lot of what this wiki article described, and I’m something of a news junkie to boot. It was a great read.
From the wiki article…
And interesting quote, in light of the current situation going on at Reddit right now.
I have to believe Aaron would be leading the charge to Lemmy if he were still alive today.
I remember when Ellen Pao was the nightmare and spez wasn’t yet perceived as the fuck he actually is. Different times, I guess the devil you know is better sometimes. Otherwise you get spez, fuck spez.
Based on interviews since (so obvious grain of salt) as well as her background (keyword “her”), Pao was likely set up to clean up the image a bit and then get thrown under the bus for such negative actions as… banning revenge porn and blatant hate subs. She gets a nice payday and Reddit gets a bogeyman.
Its pretty standard for start up cultures and “tech” companies. Bring in an outsider to do the unpopular stuff and then have the founder/golden boy come back to “right the ship”.
The glass cliff…
What she did was OK IMO. Banning revenge porn is absolutely necessary. Probably a legal requirement in almost all countries. The rage against Pau seemed to be from extremists who wanted reddit to allow discrimination, bigotry, racism, and everything in that vein.
The resulting uncensored Voat fork of reddit, was a completely useless cesspool.
I’ve seen a Lemmy server (feddit.dk) require posts and comments to be legal (probably for the country of the server). Which in my opinion is obvious. It should be a minimum conduct requirement for a social network anyway.
I remember when he took over after Ellen he was given a hero’s welcome. Sad to see how far its all fallen.
Precisely this. Nothing else to add.
Remember whatsapp annual 1€ payment? My fucking god what happened? Anyone defending this price is fucking insane.
Absolutely this!! Thank you for posting this, I had forgotton Aaron’s name and was unable to find him when this all had started. Can’t believe it’s been 10 years
Yes, it makes me sad, that many of the people who said “Never forget”, kind of forgot anyways. I’m glad I could refresh your memory, it’s as relevant as ever IMO.
Intellectual property law is such a farce. It’s wild that he was on the hook for THAT hefty of a prison sentence just because he downloaded academic articles which should on principle automatically be in the public domain.
Absolutely, the way he was treated was criminal IMO. It’s horrendous that such practically illegal law enforcement isn’t held accountable. They twisted everything against him, and ignored all his rights completely. Secret service behaved like mobsters, and their accusations were complete bogus.
I’m so happy I live in a country where the law and enforcement is much more sensible. IP law is still important, but they won’t destroy you for breaking it.