I was thinking about this the other day. MIT is dead to me. Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann should be ashamed for the rest of their lives.
Neither suffered any consequences.
Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
121–130 of 201 posts
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. As someone pretty far on the left I was shook by the banning of Donald Trump, and this trend of censorship makes me really, really, really scared. If you're anything but a very centrist Democrat, this should scare the crap out of you.
The actual Left has been a target of private censorship and public suppression even when the Right got a free pass for so long that, as someone on the Left, I’m not at all scared that some private censorship is happening to violent extremists on the Right (mildly surprised, but not scared.) Though “you should be scared because what has been happening to the Left longer, and much more severely, than to the Right might…
While this is true, on the internet at least I haven't seen leftists sites like revleft or crimethinc get denied access to hosters, yet.
But yes, you're right that the left is the source of private censorship for a long time, which is why lemmy is developped by a lot of leftists, for example. If they're ready to ban a right wing president though, I can imagine how severe the crackdown on the left would be.
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#123Had never seen that quote from TBL. It's nice, but it falls real flat coming from the man that used his fame to push for DRM in browsers.
The DRM thing is complicated. Before you condemn a person who wrote something kind and thoughtful, if it helps you to reconsider: Tim Berners-Lee's recent work seems to be driven by ideas with which Aaron Swartz (based on his own work) might agree. (And there's the whole thing of him earlier choosing to sit out the Web gold rush billions, and instead focus on stewardship of this tech platform for the world to communicate, from a university position.)
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#124A person with so much to live for and so much to accomplish; I don't believe he took his own life.
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've often spoken with my more left-leaning friends about the need to try and find middle ground with my more right-leaning friends, and quickly. Donald Trump was an incompetent, by almost any measure you want to use. However, he shifted the Overton Window dramatically. When the Republican version of Barack Obama bursts onto the scene - someone eloquent, competent, and thoroughly able to move effectively in the polit…
This can only be true if Republican efforts at voter suppression continue to be successful while also states don’t choose to forgo the electoral college. Republicans only win because of a tremendously successful campaign to not let people vote. They are very much a minority party by any measure except outsized influence. They have fewer voters. Fewer people identify with them. Fewer people support their policies. If…
There's an interesting problem here, though, which is why the US federal government is structured as it is: there are fewer people in, say, Utah than in California. And generally people in California may have different interests than those in Utah. But as citizens of the US, Utah(ians?) deserve representation at the national level, which they just wouldn't have in a first-past-the-post popular vote. A direct popular vote would always give the advantage to candidates who represent coastal and urban interests because that's where people are overwhelmingly concentrated, and this would leave rural voters disenfranchised.
It might be interesting to re-evaluate whether representation by geography still makes sense. I'm more partial to the parliamentary approach, where parties get representation proportional to votes cast for them, so this way there could be a "rural interests party" which rural voters could vote for and receive representation proportional to their population. This might also do an end-run around the mind-bogglingly corrupt practice of gerrymandering?
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#126From personal experience, Prozac can act as a suicide deterrent given the right conditions. It’s not true for everyone, and perhaps not even for most people, but there is so much stigma against it. Please, if you’re feeling anything along those lines, at least try some antidepressants. What have you got to lose? You have your whole life to gain. I miss Aaron. I ended up using some code by him a couple months ago, whi…
Placebo controlled trials show that Prozac increases suicidal thoughts. https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i65 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353604/ https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Antidepres... Eli Lilly notoriously buried the evidence of this from their own trials.
Most antidepressants actually have it right there on the tin as a potential side effect.
Paradoxically, starting an antidepressant regimen can increase the odds of suicide for some people. The mechanism seems to be something like "doesn't completely cure your depression, but makes you un-depressed enough to actually act on suicidal ideation."
This is why any competent psychiatrist will pair getting started on antidepressants with an increase in vigilance of the patient.
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody is defending plea deals here. Aaron was offered an excellent deal, regardless of how indefensible plea deals might be in general.
No, he was offered a bad deal. Copyright violations very rarely result in prison for first time offenders. He also did a mild case of hacking which together might have resulted in a short sentence. But if he had gone to court I doubt he would have got more than 4-6 months, which is the same thing as the plea deal.
If he had taken the deal and not killed himself he would be alive now and a free man 8 years later. Instead he is dead forever. I think the deal was not that bad by comparison.
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> censoring of content The supreme irony of this is that Aaron's role as a co-founder has long been censored from Reddit's founders page [0], despite agreements to the contrary [1]. More generally, Aaron had strong views on censorship [2]: > I think all censorship should be deplored. My position is that bits are not a bug – that we should create communications technologies that allow people to send whatever they like…
> But I do think that physical violence resulting in part from the amplification of voices by algorithm would have been hard to foresee. I too would be curious if his thinking would have evolved. Sadly, we'll never know. Something that always seems to be accepted without question in these conversations is that censoring violent language will reduce violent behaviour. Are we sure this is the case? For example, if you…
Now I’m curious about who you follow that were banned from Twitter and YouTube.
I don’t know if any research has been done on this, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that a normalization effect happens so that more exposure to certain modes of discourse change how you think about them. Our minds are not under our conscious control, even if we would prefer that they are.
I suspect that our president’s mode of discourse has dramatically shifted what is seen as acceptable in a lot of people, for instance.
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aaron already suffered from severe mental illness - law enforcement did not drive him to suicide. Prosecutors offered him a plea deal if he took a six month sentence in a low security facility, which he turned down before killing himself. 99.9% of people his age would not end up dead by their own hands in that situation.
From wikipedia: > On September 12, 2012, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine more felony counts, which increased Swartz's maximum criminal exposure to 50 years of imprisonment and $1 million in fines. During plea negotiations with Swartz's attorneys, the prosecutors offered to recommend a sentence of six months in a low-security prison, if Swartz would plead guilty to 13 federal crimes. Swa…
For an interesting comparison, consider the first person to be charged under CFAA. He's a co-founder and partner at YC. Both defendants were the children of parents who were involved with early UNIX, one at Bell Labs and NSA, and the other as founder of the Mark Williams Company. One kid got probation, community service and a fine. The other was not so fortunate. If we compare the actual damages caused by each, the result seems to violate any notion of proportionality.
Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The actual Left has been a target of private censorship and public suppression even when the Right got a free pass for so long that, as someone on the Left, I’m not at all scared that some private censorship is happening to violent extremists on the Right (mildly surprised, but not scared.) Though “you should be scared because what has been happening to the Left longer, and much more severely, than to the Right might…
While this is true, on the internet at least I haven't seen leftists sites like revleft or crimethinc get denied access to hosters, yet. But yes, you're right that the left is the source of private censorship for a long time, which is why lemmy is developped by a lot of leftists, for example. If they're ready to ban a right wing president though, I can imagine how severe the crackdown on the left would be.
Honestly, if leftists start calling for violent Revolution because they lose an election, I’m not going to be too upset if they get deplatformed too. Perhaps I’m just too comfortable with my life, but I suspect most other people would agree.