Tsk. Aaron Schwartz was a person, silly - and thus subject to laws in the USA.
Mark Zuckerberg directed his company Facebook to perform the illegal action. Facebook is a corporation - and thus writes the laws in the USA, while of course being exempt to them (barring occasional small fines to keep the rabble believing they’re not).
One day maybe the rest of the US public will wake up to the fact that it’s a corporate oligarchy and take some action, but I don’t think it will be until some really irrefutable and impactful issues occur. Bread and circuses, as they say. Or maybe Walmart and Netflix to update the idiom.
Everyone knows that laws are just for the poors.
Aaron was facing charges, and a really bad deal, and he took his life. He was never sentenced because there was no time for that, but it’s obvious that things weren’t going well for him, and that he was attacked disproportionally.
Meta is still facing investigation and will go to court still, and will very likely face charges for torrenting the data, same as Anthropic. They have not been sentenced because there was been no trial yet, it’s still under investigation, because it will be a harsher penalty if it can be proved that they uploaded in addition to downloaded.
I think this is inaccurate enough to consider it misinformation (IMHO).
Yes, it is obvious that we all should fight Meta and praise Aaron Swartz. And it’s true that the legal system is fucked up, and someone with power and money is in total advantage. But as despicable as Meta is, I don’t think that saying wrong things is going to be the way to fight for our rights. There are already good enough arguments if we stay true to the facts.
Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t get enough credit for being one of the most garbage humans to ever exist. He’s done so much damage to the human collective, and yet gets to skate and not be blamed. Enjoy your chunk of Hawaii dickhead.
Underhated? 🤔
On this echo chamber site, he’s maybe appropriately hated. To the world at large he’s definitely not
Social Media bullshit was going to happen either way. Silicon Valley is full of wannabe Zucks so I’m not sure things would turn out different either way.
Though he is the one, who actually did these things, so he should be hated for them. Sure, if it would have been someone else, we would hate that asshole instead
Social media was going to happen, but there was never a need for it to turn into the dystopian Hellhole it’s become.
Capitalism ensures that regardless of the person on charge. Unless all the major social media companies manage to resist the urge to go public the stock market ensures enshittification.
Remember also during the pandemic that a bunch of publushers got up in arms about archive.org opening up their library to be unrestricted, to make sure access to books was easier at a time when people who relied on libraries could no longer access them.
They then talked authors into supporting the lawsuit due to “lost revenue”.
After a few months the authors realised it had done literally no damage and several asked the publishers to drop the lawsuit. But it turns out this wasn’t for the authors, it was for publishers, who see online libraries as a threat to be stopped.
One should also note that Aaron did it to share scientific knowledge, meta did it to generate more profit
update based on comments: perhaps better to say probably share and and/or gain access to scientific data for non profit research purposes
And that JSTOR didn’t want sue him, it was the DA pursuing it. Afaik JSTOR even published the articles in question for free 3 months after he downloaded them, basically agreeing with his criticism.
The documentary indicates it’s unclear why he did it. It could have been to share, it could have been for his own research. His outlook on data was that it should be freely available to all but in the case the prosecutors assumed his motives. We don’t actually know what he intended with the data. It’s important to remember that. Because that small detail is enough to elevate the injustice of his death. He was destroyed for downloading too much information that should have been freely available in the first place.
Yes that was an interpretation on my part given his perspective on making such information publicly available, hard to imagine he would be doing anything else with it. Nevertheless, updated my comment.
Fuck Meta. Reddit is doing it to itself with Google’s help. That’s even more of a slap to his face than facebook.
There’s also a decent case to be made that he wasn’t planning on sharing it at all. He might have just been using the articles, which he had permission to access, to do research.
“…but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”
― Terry Pratchett, Snuff
My grandfather was a fortunate man all his life. He enjoyed a lot of success in his personal life, in business, and in every aspect. We didn’t talk a whole lot, but when he started feeling sick and we knew the end was coming, he opened up quite a bit.
One day I went to visit him and he motioned for me to come closer. I moved closer to his bed, the bed we both probably knew that would be his deathbed. He had a stern look on his face, and he gave a gravelly whisper: “Son, do you want to know the secret to good fortune?”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I knew I was only seconds away from learning whatever combination of wisdom, luck and skill that he had worked on his whole life.
He told me: “If you want to be successful, first make a billion dollars.”
Since then, I’ve noticed he was absolutely correct. Ever notice how the world itself seems to bend to the will of billionaires? From that day on, I was a changed man and I vowed to get that billion dollars for myself.
Aah, yes BUUUUT, Aaron did it to help his fellow humans, whereas Yuckerberg is doing it to enrich billionaires, it’s not comparable!
Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is justified. The disadvantaged company of his needed that material. /s
deleted by creator
Remember to incorporate before doing anything illegal
I despise meta and the fact they’re not being punished for this.
He didn’t just download stuff, he installed a server on their network to do it. A bit different.
His punishment was still beyond the pale.
He also had every legal right to download those articles
Its fair to note he was never sentenced.
Because he killed himself, they offered him a terribly unfair plea deal.
He installed a server on facebook’s network?
Aaron broke open a cabinet and installed a server at a secure site on located on a campus. He was never sentenced, though.
On a university network.
I remember the story from years ago. This sounds about right. Other commenter made it sound like he installed the server on meta’s network (which would have still just been Facebook at the time.)
The rules aren’t real. Laws are made up.
Oh they’re real. They’re just not objective. The only thing that defines reality is how much money you have. Then you get to say what actually happened.
If you got enough money, you didn’t rape a person, they’re just “mentally unstable and making libellous claims”.
If you haven’t got enough money, you didn’t simply make a mistake, you ALMOST DESTROYED THE FABRIC OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY, forced labour, 200 years.
I mean…
RIP, Aaron.
I watched this and I’m just saddened by it. Especially the SOPA stuff. I can’t see modern social media reacting the same way they did to stop the legislation today. All of the major town squares have been consumed by capital. Reddit is public, Facebook is a mess, tiktok has bent the knee, Twitter is…X.
He was so right in his digital advocacy about spying and privacy.
We failed him. What would he say about the world now with AI and divided opinions.
I kept wondering how we got here. His destruction and death feels like the missing piece of the puzzle.
The unifying voice we needed
Imagine a world where he was still here and became the antibroligarch.
Not like he would have been some kind of leftist folk hero giving up all his wealth or anything. Literally just one honest voice in the tech industry willing to acknowledge reality, and the ridiculous double standard for expectation of privacy for anyone who isn’t part of the inner circle of elites (technocrat or otherwise).
Pretend the public has no expectation of privacy or ownership of their own data, and that it’s for their own good and safety. If anyone protests just pretend they’re unpatriotic and/or standing in the way of progress.
Meanwhile, refuse to hand over files that were collected on the tax payer’s dime bc they implicate you and likely many of your friends in some pretty horrific crimes.
And most importantly, whenever in doubt, fall back on that old talking point that an invasion of your privacy is necessary for our children’s safety. We need invasive public surveillance to protect our children. We shouldn’t try to regulate or limit surveillance technology bc it can be used to find missing children. We shouldn’t be asking so many questions about what they’re doing bc they’re focused on the bigger picture of protecting our children while also apparently protecting their rich friends.
Who exactly are We protecting our children from by allowing this network of elites to have unlimited access to all of our data and information with no accountability or public oversight?
It’s up to the middle class to start making things right. Slaughter these motherfuckers who hold seats at the table of the above-the-law elites. Their boots crush our necks with more pressure Every. Single. Day… It’s high-time to fuck some motherfuckers up so we don’t have more stories like Aaron.
I was a very early Reddit user and remember when all this went down. If he could only see what Reddit has been slowly morphed into… literally the complete opposite of what the founder envisioned.
Aaron wasn’t a founder. He came in a year or two after Reddit was founded.
Yea pretty much. The last few years have radicalized me HARD, fuck the capitalists and the fascists that defend it, the only good capitalist is a dead capitalist.
RIP Aaron.
