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

Sine_Fine_Belli@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.world – 2361 points –
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That website has been the same since it’s first archive on 2002-12-17. Aaron Swartz had just turned 16 a month earlier. I know I had some seriously immature opinions at that age. As well, that website was still up as of this January, a decade since his passing. http://www.aaronsw.com/ is also still up, and it doesn’t look like it was updated since 2002 either. Neither is any of this referenced on his wikipedia page, nor on it’s talk page. This feels like such a reach…

I said some dumb things too, but not "child porn isn't abuse and should be legal". That's straight up predatory. You can't tell me a 16 year old shouldn't know better

Yes, I can. 16 years old is a child. I also live in one of the first jurisdictions in the world to legalise 15-17yo sexting images. I wonder if his frustration came from restrictions he faced at the time. I thought it was pretty dumb as a teen that I couldn’t take a picture of my own naked body. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm sorry but I'm not about to hold people accountable for dumb things they said as a teen.

“child porn isn’t abuse and should be legal”

I think that this is not true. It definitely is abuse. But I also think that the argument for why it is so, is not that trivial.

I mean, can you make it? Try it out!

Let's say someone distributes CP. How does what happens here, the sending of 0s and 1s across a wire, constitute abuse?

If you think about it like that, it doesn't.

Of course if you take into account a broader context, then this argument does break down. For the details you would probably need complex words and terms like "retraumatization" and "inability to consent", and "right to one's own image", and know a bit about what those things are, and how they work.

I wouldn't expect every 16 year old today to be able to get all of that straight. And I would not expect any 16 year old in the early 2000s, an age long, long before metoo, and any sensitivity toward sexual trauma, to be able to get that.