26 Year Old Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz Dies
Computer activist and co-founder of Reddit Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City according to MIT’s The Tech.
Swartz’ uncle confirmed the news in a comment to The Tech, saying his nephew took his own life in his New York City apartment.
The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption.
Swartz also co-founded Demand Progress, an advocacy group that rallies people “to take action on the news that affects them — by contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word in their own communities.”
In July 2011, Swartz was arrested for allegedly harvesting 4 million academic papers from the JSTOR online journal archive. He appeared in court in Sept. 2012, pleading not guilty.