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Reddit’s About page doesn't include Aaron Swartz as a founder
- squarefoot 6y agoJust 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 6y agoSome 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.
- squarefoot 6y agoTrue. 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 6y agohttps://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/
- DarthGhandi 6y agoThe 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?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nhylated 6y agohttp://voat.co/ http://voat.co/
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- DavidVoid 6y agoIt'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.
- wolfgke 6y 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. This was not uncommon on Reddit before Reddit became more streamlined. :-)
- wolfgke 6y ago> Just the one question: alternatives? Voat: https://voat.co/ https://voat.co/
- seattledev 6y agoChapo.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
- swebs 6y agoMost 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
- seattledev 6y agoTo be fair, that posting is largely tongue in cheek because they're bitter for getting banned on reddit under the false pretense of violence. I'm sure a couple people believe it unironically but no one is actually organizing to hurt anyone.
- swebs 6y ago>false pretense of violence It was pretty real https://archive.is/XrqOC https://archive.is/XrqOC
- squarefoot 6y agoAs 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 6y agoI 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 6y agoWell 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 6y agoLemmy [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 https://github.com/LemmyNet 2: https://dev.lemmy.ml https://dev.lemmy.ml
- sbmthakur 6y agoruqqus.com It's in beta though.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoReddit 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.
- mantap 6y agoConsidering 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.
- Krasnol 6y agoBut 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.
- tinus_hn 6y agoThat’s true, just until when it’s no longer true. Just like Digg, MySpace and many networks before them.
- ratww 6y agoThe problem is that such an open-ended prediction has absolutely no value whatsoever... I'm sure Reddit will die someday, but people have been saying this for at least 10 years or more. When non-technical users started using it, when violentacrez et al were banned, with every layout change big or small, staff changes... People said the same thing about Facebook when it opened to non-edu users or when it launched the timeline. Or when Apple is antagonistic towards developers. Reddit, Facebook, Apple and other companies are able to do well by antagonizing niche users because niche users can be replaced by regular folk. And sometimes it's almost necessary to antagonize those early users, since they can be a barrier to growth. Reddit wants to dissociate themselves from 4chan, t_d, Boston Bomber and all this stuff. And they're doing it via cat pictures and the sort.
- mysticlabs 6y agoDistasteful. There would be no Reddit without Aaron. RIP.
- brodouevencode 6y agoCan 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?
- gonzo41 6y agoYet 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 6y agoI don't believe GP is debating whether Reddit is popular. People will put their "content" on whatever platform appears "free" and easy to use.
- gonzo41 6y agoI know, but is any social media not run top down? I don't see the issue with it. They pay for the servers. Maybe we are expecting too much?
- unityByFreedom 6y agoReddit is really good at getting people to remove content for free. That's the distinction IMO. They give mods power to remove things they don't like in exchange for removing or reporting illegal stuff that would otherwise be impossible (?) for reddit to cost effectively manage.
- brodouevencode 6y agoMaybe but they sell it as something different
- sebmellen 6y agoReddit is very clearly not in favour of free speech: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/reddit-bans-thedonald-and-chapotraphouse-among-2000-online-communities-in-huge-purge-2020-06-29 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 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan. I think the reasons for this are self-evident.
- agumonkey 6y agoThis sub being shut has nothing to do with restricting free speech, isn't it ?
- sebmellen 6y agoShutting 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.
- agumonkey 6y agowas it discussion ? or more ?
- sebmellen 6y agoIf you're asking this question, you don't understand the principles of freedom of speech. Read the Aaron Swartz essay linked above, and while you're at it, watch this, from Noam Chomsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-oV42OMQoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-oV42OMQoE.
- agumonkey 6y agoI think your opinion is extremely myopic and biased, I don't care much of shutting down subreddits to be honest, especially if you get extremists ready to act all up and angry together. They're still very free to speak have no worry. Also if reddit didn't stop that, they'd be flagged as pro-racist. There was a need for a decision to be made, nothing else.
- 082349872349872 6y agoAs they say in the Belt, "inyalowda tili tenya fit detim fo bang fit xitim" (They own the past to control the present).
- ameen 6y agoFor 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 6y agoIt started out as kick-ass book series. But yes, the TV show is pretty good too.
- losvedir 6y agoI 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 6y agoIn 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_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1oewi/ 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_there_was_a_third_cofounder_of_reddit_who_was/c0x40yz/ 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-have-a-third-co-founder/ https://observer.com/2011/07/rumors-acquisitions-did-reddit-... including comments by PG.
- abc-xyz 6y agoFrom 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://startupstories.com/2006/11/29/passion-for-your-users-will-come-back-alexis-ohanian-co-founder-of-reddit/ http://web.archive.org/web/20070823200504/http://startupstor...
- NateEag 6y ago
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- vbezhenar 6y agoIf someone's not aware about Aaron's story, I suggest to read Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
- ObsoleteNerd 6y agoAnd/or watch the documentary, which you can watch legally and free on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaro...
- cryptica 6y agoMost of the elites are weak, cowardly and selfish hypocrites. There is no way they'll be able to stop the upcoming revolution. They'll fall like dominoes the minute the tension starts to rise... If you're an elite and you have any strength at all, you'd better start throwing your buddies under the bus soon. It's going to be you or them. They're so weak and so selfish, you don't have much time left before they start to crack. If there is any dirt at all, it will all come out. Always has, always will. There are too many people in the world. You can never control all of them.
- easytiger 6y agoPretty good example of the kind of nonsense endemic on Reddit
- krapp 6y agoUnfortunately, it's not that uncommon here, either.
- easytiger 6y agoIncreasingly so alas
- cryptica 6y agoA lot of people in the corporate sphere have no idea what's going on outside of their bubble. Society is falling apart. Morals are essential to the functioning of society.
- easytiger 6y agoI'm afraid you come across as insane.
- cryptica 6y agoI am poorly adjusted, if that makes me insane, then I take it as a compliment. "The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted." - Aldous Huxley
- pulkitsh1234 6y agoThis 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 6y agoThis 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_there_was_a_third_cofounder_of_reddit_who_was/c0x40yz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2njs/til_th...
- andreareina 6y agoOld mobile version: https://i.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddit_rewrites_history_by_excluding_aaron_swartz/ https://i.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddit...
- vaccinator 6y agoOld version: https://ns.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddit_rewrites_history_by_excluding_aaron_swartz/ https://ns.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/j4fsi1/reddi...
- drno123 6y agoAs 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?
- watwut 6y agoYes 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.
- nullc 6y agoOrtiz 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 6y agoI 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 6y agoI'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 6y agoBuild 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 6y agoThen follow his steps and fight for the future.
- callmeal 6y agoFor those not familiar with Aaron's writing, first read this: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall Then continue here: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve
- philips4350 6y agoWow 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 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20180731111417/https://www.redditinc.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180731111417/https://www.reddi... I don't think he was ever on that page
- slippyd 6y agoThat’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.crunchbase.com/organization/reddit https://web.archive.org/web/20140815155953/http://www.crunch...
- actuator 6y agoI 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.
- djsumdog 6y agoThe 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/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/voat-what-went-wrong/
- li4ick 6y agoI blocked most of Reddit (also, deleted my account) when I say this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSVqoW1rz6w&t=850 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSVqoW1rz6w&t=850
- bosswipe 6y agoI 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.
- seattledev 6y agoHe 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 6y agoIt 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 6y agoThis 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.
- toyg 6y agoParent 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.
- nullc 6y agoTo 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 6y agoreddit 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.
- ss64 6y agoReddit 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 http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html
- cies 6y agoSo 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 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
- skinnymuch 6y agoChapo.chat linked by someone else uses Lemmy. As a product, Lemmy seems pretty good.
- thimkerbell 6y agofeatures?
- cies 6y agoon the website?
- doe88 6y agoIf 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.
- toyg 6y agoShows 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”.
- swebs 6y 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.
- ChrisKnott 6y agoThis 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.
- swebs 6y agoBut 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.
- ChrisKnott 6y agoAgain, you say "caught red handed" like it was something he was doing secretly. What he did was change every instance of "fuck /u/spez" to "fuck the /r/the_donald mods". He did this because he lost patience in the face of mass online harassment. He immediately apologized. I just wanted to make clear to anybody passing by - who wants to know what actually happened - that the narrative you are pushing is not supported by evidence. Of course, if you are prepared to "who knows" something without evidence, then in the world of digital information you can suppose practically anything.
- swebs 6y agoHere's the full story for anyone who is curious. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/reddit-edit-post https://www.wired.co.uk/article/reddit-edit-post I don't know what you mean by "the narrative you are pushing". The only narrative is that the CEO of reddit did something that seriously caused me to lose faith in the site and went completely unpunished. You may feel that the event was inconsequential, but not everyone feels the same.
- tomhoward 6y agoFunnily 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_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1oewi/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1ofbk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_co... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Slowe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Slowe
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- blfr 6y agoI 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 https://genius.com/Kanye-west-gorgeous-lyrics
- alexandr1us 6y agoReddit went full commie since about 3 years. It became super annoying to get hundreds of down votes because you are not a leftist bot
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]