• kreynen@kbin.melroy.org
    157·
    1 year ago

    @anzo this comment originally posted on a Reddit ELI5 thread might be a better starting point for people who aren’t familiar with Aaron’s legacy and the controversy around his death.

    I’ll actually try to explain this like you’re five, because that doesn’t ever seem to happen on here anymore.

    Aaron Swartz was a man who was a part of a whoooole lot of really cool things. He helped to make a thing called “RSS” which helps people learn all the stuff they want to without going to all the different websites that that takes. It’s like if you want to make a sandwich, but normally you’d have to go to a bread store, a meat store, a cheese store, and a vegetable store. RSS makes it so you can get that all at once (and enjoy your sandwich much more easily).

    Aaron also was part of a group of guys who helped give out information from “PACER”, which is a big system full of information about what happened at courts. But, even though all of this information should have been free, they charged people for it. Imagine if each time you asked your teacher a question you had to pay a quarter. Even though that’s their job, and it should be free, they made you pay. Well that sure did make some law-people mad. They started to investigate Aaron, but eventually stopped when they realized Aaron was right.

    Aaron did some more stuff, too. You know this website you’re on? Aaron was a big part of it at the very beginning. A lot of people call him one of the founders, but that’s not entirely true. What is true is that Aaron helped to shape and mold and make this website what it is today. It’s like when mommy buys you Play-Doh. She actually started it, but you’re the one that made the amazing sculpture out of it (with help from your friends, of course).

    Aaron also did something that made some people pretty mad. You see Aaron thought that information should be very free. He though that people like you, and me, and everyone else should be able to read as much information as we could on stuff. He thought that the work that scientists did at colleges should be seen by everyone! So he went to MIT to access JSTOR, basically a virtual library of science, and went “out of bounds” according to MIT. He went somewhere he wasn’t supposed to go, and went there to try to get all this information and science from JSTOR, which he was actually allowed to do. The problem was like this though. Imagine Aaron went to the library. He can check out as many books as he wants, right? What Aaron wanted to do was check out every book, and make sure that everyone around the world had the same chance to read them that he did. But in order to check out those books, he had to go behind the desk, which was a no-no.

    So what happened is that Aaron got in trouble with JSTOR, the library, and with MIT, who is pretty much the librarian. Eventually, JSTOR decided they didn’t think Aaron did anything wrong, and didn’t want to try anymore. MIT was a little slower though, and didn’t say much. Then the US Attorney’s office came in. They’re like the cops that might come to the library. The owners of the library didn’t think that you did anything wrong, and wanted the cops to leave. The librarian didn’t answer as quickly though, so the cops stuck around and kept asking Aaron questions and checking through his pockets for stuff.

    This whole thing was very scary for Aaron. Aaron didn’t have a whole lot of money, and if he got in as much trouble as the cops wanted to put him in, he would have to give it all up, and go to prison for a long time. This scared Aaron a lot. This was especially tough for Aaron because he had been really sad for quite some time. It was a special kind of sad that doesn’t go away with a tight hug from mom, so it was especially hard to deal with.

    On Friday, Aaron hung himself. Some people think it was because he was so scared of the cops that he just couldn’t deal with it. Some people think it was because he was so sad that he just wanted it to go away. But most people think it was a combination of the two.

    There are a lot of people talking about it now though, because if the cops hadn’t been so mean to Aaron, he’d probably still be alive today. This makes people very sad and very angry, because Aaron was a very smart, very kind person. We wanted him to stay around much longer than he did, and now we want to make sure that nothing like what happened to Aaron will happen to anyone else again.

  • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
    731·
    1 year ago

    He’d be turning in his grave if he knew what Reddit turned into

    • Destide@feddit.ukEnglish
      351·
      1 year ago

      If only lemmy was there this is more of what he envisioned for Reddit.

      • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
        15·
        1 year ago

        He’d probably have enabled ActivityPub on Reddit, had it been around.

  • demesisx@infosec.pubEnglish
    754·
    1 year ago

    Aaron would be appalled at the state of the world of today if he, like so many brave, selfless defenders of human rights, hadn’t been murdered by the capitalist cadres of yesterday.

      • demesisx@infosec.pubEnglish
        59·
        1 year ago

        Yes. He also helped create RSS which is basically where content needs to be moving. He had exactly the same principles in mind as Lemmy/Mastodon creators and would have been a vocal opponent of what Reddit became. I mean, perhaps he could have eventually been corrupted, but judging by his record of hacktivism, he probably would have become a “problem” for the powers that seek to control/centralize, advertise to, and study our browsing habits.

  • Nobody@lemmy.worldEnglish
    341·
    1 year ago

    RIP. Aaron was too good for this world. I hope he’s found peace in the next.

  • jadelord@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    241·
    1 year ago

    He was from the future. Look, he’s reading from a book made of flexible glowing paper and not flat tablets like we primitive people do.

    • sqgl@beehaw.orgEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      Just to be clear, MIT’s role was to catch him out by finding his hoovering laptop hidden in the janitor’s cupboard and reporting him to cops. JSTOR didn’t want to prosecute but the government did, presumably because he helped scuttle SOPA & PIPA and was clearly going to be a powerful thorn in their side in future.

      Unfortunately MIT gave the government the excuse they were waiting for to destroy him.

      That is what I recall from the documentary anyhow.

      • adr1an@programming.devOPEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        iirc, MIT could have denied access to FBI in setting up a trap to whoever was the owner of such laptop. They could’ve set the trap themselves and dealt with academic discipline too. So, they did enable the up-scalation of the conflict.

        Of course, it’s all subjective at this point… either I recall incorrectly some details, or even how I unconsciously choose to see it is shaped by personal world views.