There is some truly awful irony that a cofounder of reddit, with reddit's current actions, was the victim of a reactionary bully justice system for using his legal access to the JSTOR database [1] even though JSTOR came to a non-criminal settlement with him over it. A prosecution that undoubtedly contributed (or caused) mental health difficulties leading to his suicide.

And now, a decade later, the reddit platform that he cofounded is betraying the principles of that cofounder.

[1] Yes it's slightly more complex than that, I know, but not to anything that should have come anywhere near the attention of criminal prosecutors. He used his legitimate access to download far more than JSTOR ever thought someone would do. He did it in a basement that anyone walking around the building could go into, and entering an unlocked closet where he connected his laptop to a network switch wherein he left the laptop running while downloading.

~

Heck even after MIT noticed this they didn't lock the closet! Instead the just surveilled it with a camera to observe who might be going in & out. If there was any harm at all from these actions is was merely that downloading the way he did made the JSTOR system slow down at times until they blocked the offending IPs, and then the whole block.

A decade later and this injustice still fills me with sadness and rage every time it comes up. And as cynical as I get with every passing year, I hope to hell that I still at least hang on to that sadness and rage and never let time and cynicism dull its edge.