Reddit CEO defiant as moderator strike shutters thousands of forums: 'We made a business decision that we’re not negotiating on'

wave_walnut@kbin.social to Technology@kbin.social – 246 points –
Reddit CEO defiant as moderator strike shutters thousands of forums: 'We made a business decision that we’re not negotiating on'
fortune.com

"Protest and dissent is important,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told the AP. “The problem with this one is it’s not going to change anything."

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Yeah he is one of the founders, but Huffman was always in it more for the profit. Aaron Swartz was the one with the vision, he was an activist and believed in free information. Sadly Swartz committed suicide after being arrested for sharing academic journals from a secured computer at MIT. Federal prosecution decided to make an example of him for multiple felonies.

and silo'd academia has only gotten 100x worse since then. i can't even imagine how much progress has been lost thanks to greedy academic "journals" keeping anyone from reading their papers, stopping widespread peer review, and destroying scientists' ability to assemble wide bodies of evidence

Wasnt swartz only there for a brief time after a merger and only really on the masthead. It was mostly Huffman and Alexis that started it in their college dorm. Alexis was def more the vision/community guy and Steve more the coder iirc.

I'd argue that all three of them would still be considered the co-founders considering how early Swartz was brought into the picture. Of the three though he for sure had the smallest impact on what reddit became after its first corporate buyout.

A small correction: Swartz didn't share the journal articles. There's reasonable doubt on whether he was ever planning on sharing them or not, but he was arrested for the downloading of the articles not the sharing.