Aaron is no longer considered as cofounder by reddit. He fought for free speech.

Sine_Fine_Belli@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.world – 2369 points –
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The feds did come after him for other computer crimes (unrelated to those views) and he hung himself and investigation into him stopped at that point.

Eh, didn't know the full story behind him (or even that he hung himself for that matter).

I'm not gonna pretend to have sympathy for him if he was guilty of possessing the stuff that he was advocating for.

He didn't hang himself because of child porn. He hung himself because he was facing life in prison for downloading some journal articles. The government was trying to make an example out of him.

Actually he was facing 6 months on a plea deal but refused as he wouldn't accept that he commited felonies. Then he killed himself rather than do his time.

Yeah, it wasn’t mandatory that he had to kill himself. It’s absurd that the gov’t was prosecuting him, and fuck scientific journals, but even if he served some time in prison… other people do that and, you know, get out of prison eventually.

He was a big fan of freedom of speech of all kinds. That doesn't in any way suggest he possessed child porn. Read the entire page and it becomes quite clear that he is literally just listing laws that make certain kinds of data illegal.

I strongly disagree that CSAM should be legal, but the point that honest people have their lives ruined by being accused of possessing it, or by having normal images of their children, is certainly true.

If you defend that shit in ANY way I'm gonna raise some eyebrows way up.

I do not care if it's to defend "free speech", there's WAY better ways to be an advocate for "any" free speech that don't include advocating for murder, hate speech or in this case CP.

"Child pornography is not necessarily abuse.", sure buddy.

"Even if it was, preventing the distribution or posession of the evidence won't make the abuse go away.", yeah the typical "stricter gun laws won't make mass shootings go away" excuse. Of course, but legalizing it would only make it way worse.

But you have no problem creating judgement about the guy without knowing anything about him.

I read what he posted on his website. I know enough to make that judgement. I know me AND you would have said the exact same thing about everyone else that posted that shit on their website.

No, you and I are different. I read what a 16 year old kid wrote AND I read the article that he linked to that explains why he was saying what he said.

You are basing your entire view of an adult based on what they wrote as a kid, without reading further to see why they had that opinion at the time. And you're completely fine judging them that way.

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