It is about extremely accomplished "young white men" deciding that unjust restrictions (not even rules, but terms of use of a website) should not be obeyed.
Terms of use are rules. Terms of use are the contract you establish with a party when they agree to render services to you. Just because it's "a website" doesn't mean shit.
Anyway, I don't care how accomplished you are, you don't get to decide that you don't like an arbitrary subset of the social contract and hence should be exempt from it. You are welcome to construct an argument against those rules and attempt to persuade others to your cause. But an argument for exceptionalism is no excuse for bypassing normal, democratic channels for political change.
Honestly I don't see why this point is so hard to understand. Aaron thought he had the answer to society's ills. You know what, everyone thinks that. Grumpy old men pissed off at immigration think they have the answer. The Unabomber thought he had the answer. It is one of the key advantages of democracy that we do not let individuals who think they have the answer just march in and change things as they see fit.
He didn't harm anyone in his violation of the website's terms.
Should the user of adblock be facing multiple criminal charges if they visit a website whose terms disallow its use? It's absolutely ridiculous to allow these terms to be used for criminal prosecution.
Civil disobedience is a valid form of protest, and such a minor act of disobedience is ridiculous to throw dozens of frivolous charges on.
The democratic process for change in the US is long dead. Aaron had powerful enemies in Washington.
What's to minimize, when the only potential victim of his actions said that were not harmed (and indeed they were not)?
What conflation? Do you think criminal charges for violating a website's terms are not ridiculous? Do you use adblock?
If you think democratic forces in the US are still working properly, I can see why you'd find realism to be melodramatic.
And finally, if you think powerful enemies in the US amount to nothing, you are again extremely naive.
In any case let's hope you aren't caught using adblock and violating a website's terms and being completely financially ruined in the pretrial stages of a frivolous prosecution.
This is about headstrong young white men deciding that the rules do not apply to them any more.