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Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

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Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#161

Post by Reedx »

hctaw wrote: post #160
Reedx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check back when Bernie (or the next Bernie, if he doesn't run again) is deplatformed, and we'll see who was confused. Just remember back to how the media and establishment pulled together to stop Bernie during the primaries. Think this new tool won't be used the next time they're in danger of losing power to an outsider?

Please stop with the false equivalencies. Donald Trump directed a mob to storm the Capitol while they were certifying election results, the ensuing riot led to at least five deaths. He is being deplatformed because of the impending threat of violence he presents. This isn't a hypothetical situation - he held a rally, incited a riot, and people died.

Not saying it is or will be the same. It isn't and won't be.

This is about a TOOL. You don't have to use a tool the same way every time.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#162

Post by dragonwriter »

hajile wrote: post #140
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or remove the electoral college (which is an anti-democratic contrivance originally meant to cajole then-slave states into remaining in the Union[0]) and make voting mandatory to completely nuke the GOP's strategy of voter disempowerment (which is their best hope as demographic shifts increasingly favor the Democrats). 0: https://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/

The South could have a 3/5 slave vote with or without an electoral college. That was related to total votes and representatives in congress. If anything, Shay's Rebellion was the real reason. The majority (farmers) voted with their guns to steal from the minority (bankers). Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for supper. Several Federalist papers are dedicated exclusively to this idea and the pr…

> I’d note that if slavery were the reason for the formation, then the Senate would have been a bad idea as it stripped power away from the Southern states (as that article points out, Virginia alone had more than 10% of the total House votes).

Its true that with the apportionment of House votes in the Constitution, the Senate (by comparison) had weaker representation of the South (30.8% in the Senate, 35.4% in the House), but, as with terms explicitly protecting slavery, the concern wasn’t for the immediate effect, but as insurance against trends that were already apparent with the expected internal and external expansion of the US and its political development.

With the first Congress seated after the apportionment due to the 1790 Census (which included Kentucky, admitted in 1792), the Senate already was slightly more favorable to the South than the House (the South had 38.4% of the Senate and 37.1% of the House). With the Congress seated after the 1800 apportionment, the South had 46.1% of the Senate, and 39.0% of the House.

The idea that the Senate would have been a “bad idea” in terms of political power in the South assumes that no one at the time of the Constitution had even considered the possibility of thinking a few years down the road.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#163

Post by Nextgrid »

manfredo wrote: post #108
jeltz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Swartz wasn't torrenting pirated movies. He was essentially trying to mirror JSTOR. He was programmatically downloading massive numbers of articles, and using mac address spoofing to avoid triggering rate limiting. He also authored a manifesto explicitly declaring his intent to knowingly break the law: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj... Copyright violations rarely result in prison sentenc…

> copyright violators are rarely seeking to violate copyright on the same scale and with the same outspoken ideological justification as Swartz

I disagree. I'd say that Swartz's actions to try and make research freely available online (especially when said research is often funded by taxpayers and not by the copyright holders of the resulting paper) is more noble than for example pirates who publish entertainment material such as movies, music, etc.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#164

Post by hobby-coder-guy »

bobuk wrote: post #26

More than 10 years ago, I've asked Aaron about the best way to tell him "thanks for your job". He said what he has a big wishlist on Amazon, so I've chosen a couple of books and bought them to him. Since then, once a year I have an event in my calendar: "check out what's new on Aaron's wishlist". Don't know why I decide to write it today but this is a link for this wishlist, just for inspiration. I think it will help…

“I” not “I’ve”

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#165

Post by webXL »

jonathanlb wrote: post #141
webXL wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaron seemed very opposed to large corporations and their control of information. The increase of control seems to be timed and in favor with the incoming administration. Government using business to do its bidding is very troubling, and I'm sure Aaron would have been very concerned about that. Remember, this increase of power can be wielded by the next populist leader and there are plenty of dark possibilities outsi…

> The increase of control seems to be timed and in favor with the incoming administration. Government using business to do its bidding is very troubling Is that really the case with Facebook, Twitter, et al.? Didn't Facebook and Twitter have favorable standing with Trump's administration (vis a vis keeping Trump on the platform despite his violating their ToS repeatedly)?

I have some doubts about this claim of Trump "violating their ToS repeatedly" I just google'd "trump tos violations list" and nothing like a clear list came up. That should be relatively easy, right? Especially after 1/6? Here's a search from before this year:

https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+twitter+violations+%22...

"When the looting starts, the shooting starts" came to mind (you have to go to archive.org to view it, which is kinda sad in a way... are videos of the 3rd Reich next to go?):

https://web.archive.org/web/20200701003329/https://www.latim...

Can anyone come up with one?

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#166

Post by selimthegrim »

xadhominemx wrote: post #106
SirSourdough wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were threatening him with 50 years in jail and a million in fines or accepting an immoral (to him, and as a more broadly held belief of many) punishment with no opportunity to defend himself and the prospect of a lifelong record of serious crimes. How is that not an effort to ruin someone’s life?

I don’t think Aaron’s criminal record would have impacted his life much at all. If anything it would have burnished his credentials and credibility as an activist.

He wanted to run for office in the future and saw catching a felony as a risk to that goal

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#167

Post by thisrod »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #128
kypro wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 discou…

> I suspect that our president’s mode of discourse has dramatically shifted what is seen as acceptable

Why isn't that a rational response? Many of Trump's actions were wrong. However, he got away with them, and acceptable and normal are about what you can get away with, not what's right.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#168

Post by xadhominemx »

Jugurtha wrote: post #107
xadhominemx wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was not going to get crushed by the government, he was going to serve a 6 month sentence in a low security facility. This is the sort of sentence one might receive for stealing a car. Are those individuals “crushed” by the government?

My point is that the situation would put anyone's resilience to the test.

Millions of people in the US have served sentences of similar length or longer

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#169

Post by breck »

depneed wrote: post #33
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #13

Aaron could have accomplished so much more had he not succumbed to depression. His voice would be most welcome now as tech has entered a bitter political conflict. To anyone suffering from depression at this time: You are needed. Your voice is needed. Aaron's end was a net negative, too early and robbed all of us of a brilliant and brave young soul. Improve on Aaron's accomplishments by following his lead but persist…

> Your voice is needed. I see that "anyone" to you is "any leftist". The internet has sent a very clear and unmistakable signal this past week that the voices of anyone else are not welcome.

If we had all listened to Aaron none of this would have happened. He was for truth and education and equality and freedom. Too many people have been marginalized by the #ImaginaryPropertyRegime, left and right, and this was exactly one of the things Aaron was worried about and fighting against.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago

#170

Post by webmaven »

kypro wrote: post #109
btown wrote: post #50

Earlier 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…

> 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?

Yes, there have been studies on the correlation and causative links between the two. Ethical experimentation to prove causation definitively is difficult to say the least, but there have been various "natural experiments" that can be learned from.

At the very least, an extreme skeptic would still have to grudgingly acknowledge that violent speech is a leading indicator for violent behavior, and that interventions that reduce violent speech also reduce violent behavior, but the evidence is strong that the link goes beyond mere correlation. Here is one recent study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2013.85...

A quote from the abstract: "Across all three experiments, mild violent metaphors multiply support for political violence among aggressive citizens, especially among young adults."

Not really a surprising result, but those who wish to employ violent speech for their own ends are of course quite resistant to the notion that there is a cause and effect link to be found.

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