Techdirt-suppressed discussion about Aaron Swartz and “AI”
What?
The record of this repressed discussion speaks for itself—as does the timeline of the suppression from the Open Web, such that it cannot be hyperlinked directly, and it is invisible to archivers, search engines, and users without JavaScript:
- Background: Bruce Schneier and J. B. Branch, “AI and the Corporate Capture of Knowledge”—an essay logically hinged on Aaron Swartz; published in the San Francisco Chronicle (2026-01-14) and Schneier on Security (2026-01-16).
- Background: Mike Masnick (2023-10-05) essay, in which Masnick treats “AI” company absorption of books as “a good thing that should be supported, in the nature of folks like Aaron Swartz.” (archive.is)
- impurify, : “Aaron Swartz is the defenseless dead.” (#5595952, archive.is)
- Mike Masnick, : “Oh you can go fuck all the way off.” (#5596054, archive.is)
- impurify, : “No, I didn’t personally know Aaron Swartz.” (#5596842, archive.is)
- Mike Masnick, : “You truly have become our dumbest commenter.” (#5596913, archive.is)
- impurify, : “Texts and textual criticism.” (#5597713; not publicly visible until after ; the whole thread was suppressed as “flagged by the community” before ; cannot be archived. The last unhidden third-party snapshot was at .)
- Mike Masnick, : “I ain’t reading all that.” (cannot be archived)
Note: I usually default to UTC timestamps. To avoid confusion when viewing the same text elsewhere, timestamps are hereby represented as Techdirt’s server time (or “TD time”), with a time element that should give a tooltip of UTC.
Why?
Why am I troubling myself to restore this discussion to the Open Web? Two reasons: (a) In conscience, for the same reasons stated in my first comment linked above; and, (b) this:
“How long is it going to take before moderation system designers realize that the simple act of trying to repress intelligent, substantive discussion they don’t like online is likely to make it so that something that most people would never, ever see (like a few blog comments posted by an obscure person on a three-year-old Techdirt article) is now seen by many more people? Let’s call it the Masnick Effect.” — impurify, closely paraphrasing Mike Masnick (2005) from his coining of the term “Streisand Effect” (emphasis is Masnick’s).
The singular comment that apparently was worthwhile for someone to suppress shall be on the Open Web, and it shall be on the Open Web forever. So shall the whole discussion.
Although I intend one last comment on the Techdirt thread, which I’ll POSSE here, I will not continue the discussion in the dark. If Mr. Masnick wishes to comment here, I promise to exercise a journalistic quality of ethics and editorial discretion in deciding what to publish—with full fairness to the right of reply by a subject to what, hereby, is guerrilla open press coverage. My email address is in this page’s footer.
And?
Beginning immediately upon my discovery that the discussion was suppressed, I started in haste to dash off this quick-and-dirty website. It nonetheless took me about two days.
There are people who can spin up a new website in hours, or even minutes; they have their favored toolchains handy, and they have the infrastructure in place. Those are dangerous people, from the perspective of anyone who wants to suppress a discussion. Thus far, I have not been one of them.