• Gramba@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I’d say you can read Aaron’s own defense of child porn on his website and draw your own conclusions. If you’re trying to suggest that I’m somehow defending Ohanian and Huffman, far from it. I can think Swartz shouldn’t be considered a modern folk hero and still not like the other two.

    Huffman was a mod for the jailbait subreddit.

    Here’s an interview with Ohanian after CNN reported on the jailbait subreddit which caused Reddit to close it down. Alexis blames CNN for “making up jibber jabber” and the children who allowed images of their abuse to be posted online.

    This type of view was apparently support by all the original Reddit folks, just because Swartz has a better reputation now doesn’t mean he didn’t also share those views.

    • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      He was 16 years old when he posted this. The statement is disgusting and not really defensable by itself, but I wonder if this was a dumb naive teenage take, or if he still thought this way up until he died.

      I also don’t know if he was actually a pedophile, or if he just thought freedom of information on the web should be taken to the extreme. I would lean towards the latter since he seemed to have a relationship with an older woman at some point, but I don’t think I will ever truly know for sure.

      • Gramba@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        That archive date I linked is from shortly after his death. If you go through the various archive dates you can see that he made changes to the page over the years. He added the bit about wanting a violent overthrow of the government when he was 18 or 19. In 2007 when he would have been 21, the archive just shows a note that he had a server crash and the site is gone but you can email him if you want a copy of it. By the time he was 22 he’d put the site back online. He made more edits visible through the following years until his death. So yeah we don’t know his thoughts but we do he continued to maintain that page, even choosing to restore it after a server crash, until the point he killed himself. It’s not as though it’s an online post he made as a kid and forgot about.

        • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Thank you for the clarification there. I was not aware of the history of that cringey page. I had no idea that he kept it up and running like that.

      • Wollff@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        The statement is disgusting and not really defensable by itself

        I hate it when this happens. Why do feelings always play into this discussion? “The statement is disgusting”, is not an argument, and should never be part of any discussion.

        No matter how disgusted a statement might make you feel, if it has a good argument behind it, it should be regarded as true.

        I agree that the argument doesn’t quite work. And that’s that.

        • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          I just meant that it makes me feel gross. I imagine many people feel the same. I guess the statement itself isn’t disgusting, but what it is advocating for is. On the other hand,

          the argument doesn’t quite work.

          is putting it a bit lightly, in my opinion. Mostly because pedophilia is a generally despised act that should probably not really be argued for in the first place.

    • Bak@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I thought the mod thing was because you used to be able to be modded for a subreddit without your approval

    • theodewere@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      i really don’t give half a shit about any of them, they have their heads so far up their asses