Reddit’s cofounder said that at first the company felt like ‘a homework assignment that got out of hand’ rather than a business::Reddit’s cofounder Steve Huffman said in its early days he filled up most of the site with content using different accounts until it got more users.
I was one of the first hundred or so people who didn’t know the founders to make a reddit account. While I can’t claim any deep insider knowledge, I was on the site and paying attention to developments. The idea that became reddit came from Paul Graham and was fundamentally a more social version of Delicious. What Arron Swartz was working on at the time was Infogami, which was pretty much a wiki, and became reddit’s wiki when the companies merged.
His prosecution was certainly unjust and his suicide tragic, but I don’t think either has anything to do with Reddit.
Oh fuck I didn’t even notice your nick… you’re u/Zak on reddit??
Also, nah, his prosecution had nothing to do with reddit, this was my mandatory “fuck the abusive intellectual property and its consequence on the life of the common people” plug. Sorry 'bout that.
I am.
It’s funny, because when I was searching for the information, I found your post… so I guess I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just asked you here… 😅