Reddit, once a legitimate bastion of free speech, has in recent years devolved into just another discussion platform where censorship is the norm and dissent isn't tolerated. When a site used by millions of people decides to "quarantine" one of the biggest political forums on the internet (with over 600,000 subscribers at the time it was quarantined) because it's pro-Trump, claiming it's "fomenting harassment and violence," you know you're dealing with a site that's been compromised by ideologues.
It should come as no surprise then that the company has also engaged in some revisionism. Reddit was founded by three people – Aaron Swartz, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman. But if you look at Reddit's About Us page and scroll down to the "Founders" section, you'll notice they only show two people now:
They've "erased" founder Aaron Swartz from their history. Scumbags. Their motivation for this is pretty simple – Swartz was a strong proponent of Free Speech as an absolute ideal and right, and a fervent supporter of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America which recognizes the natural right to free speech as one of America's most important legal protections. Reddit routinely spits on the notion of free speech, so it makes sense that they'd try to memory hole him and his role in creating the site its current owners have worked hard to "sanitize" into yet another boring "safe space."
Swartz took his own life in early 2013 after MIT and the federal government embarked on an absurdly overzealous prosecution against him for supposedly "hacking" MIT's systems to "steal proprietary and confidential information." Remember this whenever you hear MIT (or one of its sycophants) claim that it's pro-free speech or boast that "hey, we make lots of our lectures available online for free!"
What did Swartz actually do? He plopped a little PC in a cable closet at MIT and used it to retrieve academic papers hidden behind paywalls owned by private companies trying to gatekeep academic research, and then he released those papers to the public (which paid for the research in the first place) for free. What a monster, right? In the words of his own family:
It is the product of a criminal-justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office and at MIT contributed to his death.
He stood up for free speech when most people would crumble under the pressure, and his contributions to the world shouldn't be forgotten or whitewashed by his former partners. He deserved better. Shame on you, Reddit.