Aaron Swartz was one of the founders of Reddit. It was founded in 2005. He left the company in 2007 and died by hanging himself in 2013.
I spent a lot of years suicidal. The way to bet is he likely had significant personal issues and that drove his high ideals and hacktivism.
I am reluctant to call it a suicide. He was squeezed and there is guaranteed to be a lot of backstory I don't know and cannot uncover nor prove.
I'm alive because people actively discouraged my suicide. In the movie The Razor's Edge, a woman ends up dead after someone who knows her well says something poisonous and then puts the first drink in her hand, leading her to relapse as an addict.
Wherever you go, there you are. The memes inside us -- the ideas inside us similar to genes -- infect and shape everything we do.
I tried to do community development in Aberdeen, Washington and the memes there were that we are doomed and it is hopeless which I didn't understand. I thought the town had a lot of potential.
Then I realized the people in gatekeeping positions were all elderly and in poor health. Our Aberdeen, one of two local community development nonprofits, was run by Michael and Sylvia Dickerson, an elderly retired couple who announced every single year "This is our last year."
I heard through the grapevine that she had a serious respiratory condition. He had had open heart surgery prior to my arrival. I inferred from interacting with them he crammed his agenda to move to Aberdeen down her throat -- she wanted to be in Olympia where she could have kept working -- and Our Aberdeen was a consolation prize he gave her to keep her busy and make her feel useful or something.
There was no meaningful interest in community development. The organization existed to serve a purpose in his marriage.
There was no plan for it to live on after them. They announced every year "This is our last year." because they expected Sylvia to die and he had no interest in the work. Then she lived and they came up with new projects to occupy her.
He's dead. I no longer live there.
These people at these meetings were projecting their personal issues onto the town. They felt hopeless and doomed and their community development involvement was poisoned by the emotional stuff they brought in the door with them.
I no longer participate on Reddit. It was a very negative experience for me.
Aaron Swartz would have been better off dealing with whatever personal issues he had that made him suicidal. The world probably would be too.
Whatever was wrong inside him became part of the architecture of ideas in his various projects.
Google was a business founded on the idea that "We can make services free and pay our bills via advertising." Reddit nominally does the same thing but struggles to make it work while ungrateful, backstabbing members hold blackouts and one "do gooder" subreddit created a rule requiring posts to have swear words in the title to discourage advertisers from advertising on their "high minded" forum.
So these do gooders expect Reddit to host them for free while they shaft Reddit out of any ability to make money off of their presence. And imagine they are good people.
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.― Martin Luther King Jr.
I don't know how to fix Reddit. I don't really care. I felt shafted and mistreated and I have stopped participating.
And I think whatever is wrong with Reddit can be traced in part to whatever was wrong with Aaron Swartz. He shaped it when it was still a little seed. It has his DNA injected into it.
And Reddit is a YC company and Jessica Livingston has been called "social radar." She likely knew Aaron Swartz and either her "radar" missed that he's a shit show who should be in therapy or you have to question what her agenda was if she knew and thought this made sense to invest in.