I don’t think you need some big coordinated Illuminati-type group to explain what’s going on. It’s way more realistic to see bad actors as behaving like bacteria or viruses. They don’t sit in secret meetings plotting everything. They just act independently in ways that benefit themselves, and the harmful effects add up on their own.  Bacteria don’t plan. They find weaknesses, take advantage of them, multiply, and adapt when something stops them. They’re not masterminds. They’re just opportunistic. One person finds a loophole, another copies it, someone else builds on it, and suddenly you have a whole system bending in a bad direction without anyone actually coordinating it.

And this is where billionaires fit in. Realistically the traits that get you to billionaire status are usually closer to aggressive mutations in an ecosystem. Not kindness or wisdom, more like: ruthlessness, willingness to exploit gaps, willingness to push harm outward while collecting gains.

Once someone becomes a billionaire, their resources act like a multiplier. A normal bad actor is one germ. A billionaire is the same germ with unlimited food, a weakened immune system around them, and the ability to reshape the environment to favor their own growth.

And then you get a feedback loop. The more safeguards and regulations get weakened, the easier it is for aggressive “strains” like this to emerge. Those new billionaires then use their wealth to weaken safeguards even more. Each round speeds up the next. It’s basically the same dynamic as a compromised immune system getting overwhelmed by infections that would normally be manageable.

But most of all, there’s no way you’re going to get that many extreme narcissists to work together nicely and follow some long term plan.

All of that can be separately true without any conspiracy tying it all together.

The world has plenty of terrible people in it that want to diddle kids. The capitalistic model of BS is very often anti-left, but not for conspiratorial reasons: They just like money and control.

There’s no need for a grand conspiracy for most of those points to never the less be roughly true, except the first two. I’m certain Maxwell had and has plenty of better channels than reddit for finding and contacting traffickers. You don’t get that successful using a fucking public forum…

Similarly, Aaron probably had plenty of other reasons to be unhappy. It’s not a terribly uncommon way to go on purpose.

We all know Reddit and Spez are a cesspit. That takes no speculation at all. They always wanted shitstirrers off the site, because they wanted to monetize the shit without all the stink.

That’s how the world works. Welcome to capitalism, where the least honorable are made to get ahead. You should try to do something more productive than trying to tie a handful of terrible people together, though.

This feels very much like a conspiracy theory to me. Fine for the shower though.

who gives a fuck about reddit?

is there any reason to suspect foul play with Swartz? his life was upended through facing the lawfare of “$1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release” he could only get rid of by effectively renouncing his beliefs.

You’re probably on to something, but it doesn’t matter beyond data points to use when the new Nuremberg trials start. Reddit that was is long gone and I think it was a veneer covering poison the whole time anyway.

I struggle to see what question you’re asking?

I just have no perspective into things like this. The only social media I am on is linkedin which is going to be hard not to be on till im homeless and facebook which is about a sorta email alternative for people I know who want to get a hold of me and some groups that use it as the virtual space. Which reminds me that I need to do my kinda weekly check of facebook to see if someone is trying to contact me or if the group has an update.

Being a moderator of a sub doesn’t mean anything since at the time sub owners could just make any Reddit user they wanted a mod.