Aaron Swartz died at 26. Reddit co-founder committed suicide in New York
Aaron Swartz, an online activist and co-founder of one of world’s most popular social news websites, Reddit, committed suicide by hanging. A rep. for the coroner confirmed that Aaron Swartz hanged self in his Brooklyn apartment in New York and his body was found on Friday. He was only 26-year-old.
Aaron Swartz was a talented programmer involved in numerous campaigns against Internet censorship. One of his biggest achievements was the founding contribution to the social news and entertainment site Reddit, which is visited by tens of millions of people every month. Reddit shows a significant influence on the media and how people get their information.
Furthermore, Swartz had a key role in development of RSS when he was a teen.
Swartz had past problems with depression, which he publicly confessed. He also faced legal problems, being accused of downloading thousands of scientific articles from the archives of MIT, with the intention of selling them. The young had denied the allegations.
His federal lawsuit on computer fraud was due to start in February 2013. If found guilty, he could have faced heavy years in jail as well as serious revenue penalties.
As the tragedy news emerged on Saturday, dozens websurfers took to Reddit to pay tribute to Swartz. You can read below some samples of commemorating comments left by Redditors.
Redditor KevinMarks:
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Redditor leopardprintlife:
“Aaron was the co-author of RSS 1.0, the co-creator Reddit and founder of Demand Progress amongst other contributions to this world in his short time here. We as a nation drop multiple indictments from a federal grand jury on this 26 year old genius for file downloading! We have a problem in our Justice Department… it’s owned by Wall St.”
User michaelfosterfromku:
“As someone who has had several articles published on JSTOR, I would have fully supported Swartz making those pieces publicly available by any means necessary.
We academics are NOT PAID A PENNY by these journals to publish these documents, and we really want our work read by as many people as possible. Swartz was doing good work, and it’s a real shame things ended this way.
I only hope it shakes up the academic publishing world and forces some movement to more public distribution.”
User Frankocean2:
“Very few people can say they had a deep impact in forming a culture in the internet, one that translated into real life and gave us this site. With all his flaws, virtues and grey areas, reddit is now a social landmark because of its reach and Aaron was instrumental in shaping that.”
Reddit cofounder Aaron Swartz, 26, died in his New York apartment. (By Fred Benenson via Wikimedia)