Tragic web pioneer commits suicide at 26: Co-founder of popular message board Reddit is found dead in New York after battling depression



Aaron Swartz, an online activist and co-founder of the popular social media site Reddit, committed suicide in his apartment in New York Friday, just weeks before going on trial on federal hacking charges. He was 26 years old.

The news of Swartz’s untimely death was confirmed to MIT's The Tech by both his uncle and his lawyer Saturday morning.



Swartz's uncle, Michael Wolf, told the New York Times that the programmer had hanged himself, and his body was discovered by his girlfriend inside his home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn at around 9.30am.



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Tragic end: Aaron Swartz, a programmer and Internet activist who co-founded a company that would eventually grow into Reddit, committed suicide Friday in New York City

Troubled soul: Swartz had been vocal about his years-long struggle with depression, extensively writing about it and discussing it in public forums



Scene: Police said Swartz ended his life by hanging himself off of a belt inside his seventh-floor apartment at 301 Sullivan Place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Police told the New York Daily News that the 26-year-old man ended his life by hanging himself from a belt in his seventh-floor unit on Sullivan Place. He left no suicide note.



Swartz was a gifted programmer who helped develop the RSS at age 14. He then went on to start a company that would eventually merge with Reddit, as well as Demand Progress, a political action group that campaigns against Internet censorship.

He was arrested in 2011 for allegedly downloading more than four million academic journals with intent to distribute them free of charge through file-sharing sites. He faced up to 35 years in prison if convicted.

In the past, the 26-year-old hinted at a battle with depression, according to Gawker .

In a 2007 speech, the Internet advocate described himself as being 'miserable' after moving to San Francisco when his company was purchased by the publishing giant Conde Nast.

'I couldn't stand San Francisco. I couldn't stand office life,' he said at the time. 'I took a long Christmas vacation. I got sick. I thought of suicide. I ran from the police. And when I got back on Monday morning, I was asked to resign.'

In a blog post from later that year, Swartz went into further detail regarding his bout with depression, writing:



'Your face falls. Perhaps you cry. You feel worthless. You wonder whether it's worth going on. Everything you think about seems bleak - the things you've done, the things you hope to do, the people around you.

Big business: Reddit was later sold to the publishing giant Conde Nast, but in 2011 it became operationally independent again

'You want to lie in bed and keep the lights off. Depressed mood is like that, only it doesn't come for any reason and it doesn't go for any either. Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you don't feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the sadness.'

In September 2012, Swartz was charged with 13 counts of felony hacking stemming from his July 2011 arrest and subsequent indictment by the Department of Justice for allegedly swiping MIT papers from the JSTOR online journal archive.



Two years earlier, Swartz allegedly connected a laptop to MIT's systems through a basement network wiring cupboard.

He registered as a guest under the fictitious name, Gary Host - a hacking in-joke in which the first initial and last name spell 'ghost.'

He then used a software program to 'rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR,' according to the indictment.

Whiz kid: At age 14, Swartz, right, co-authored an early version of RSS and later he started Infogami, a company that would eventually merge with Reddit

Brilliant: Swartz was a fellow at Harvard University's prestigious Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics



In the following months, MIT and JSTOR tried to block the recurring and massive downloads, on occasion denying all MIT users access to JSTOR.



But Swartz allegedly got around it, in part, by disguising the computer source of the demands for data.



In November and December, Swartz is said to have made 2 million downloads from JSTOR, 100 times the number made during the same period by all legitimate JSTOR users at MIT.



It is alleged that on Jan. 6, Swartz went to the wiring closet to remove the laptop, attempting to shield his identity by holding a bike helmet in front of his face and seeing his way through its ventilation holes.



He fled when MIT police tried to question him that day, it is claimed.

The 26-year-old Internet wunderkind pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, but spent the next several months struggling to come up with the money to cover legal fees and continue his fight against the Justice Department, the site ZDnet reported.



Ironically, Swartz's suicide came just two days after JSTOR announced that ii will be releasing more than 4.5 million articles to the public.



'Our goal is for everyone around the world to be able to use the content we have put online and are preserving,' JSTOR Managing Director Laura Brown said in a statement.



On Saturday, Swartz's mother has posted a statement on the site YCombinator:

'Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Aaron has been depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.

'Aaron was a terrific young man. He contributed a lot to the world in his short life and I regret the loss of all the things he had yet to accomplish. As you can imagine, we all miss him dearly. The grief is unfathomable.



Swartz's friend Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing, published a touching tribute in his honor early a tribute early Saturday morning after learning of his death.



Legal troubles: In 2011, the Reddit co-founder was arrested and charged with hacking into MIT's JSTOR online journal archive and stealing more than four million academic papers

'I'm so sorry for Aaron, and sorry about Aaron. My sincere condolences to his parents, whom I never met, but who loved their brilliant, magnificently weird son and made sure he always had chaperonage when he went abroad on his adventures,' he wrote in part.

'We have all lost someone today who had more work to do, and who made the world a better place when he did it.'

In his piece, Doctorow speculated that it is possible that what drove his friend to suicide is the prospect of incarceration, and all that comes with it.



'Imprisonment is one of my most visceral terrors, and it's at least credible that fear of losing his liberty, of being subjected to violence (and perhaps sexual violence) in prison, was what drove Aaron to take this step,' he wrote.



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