Aaron Swartz, the co-founder of popular social media site Reddit, has died in an apparent suicide on Friday. The 26-year-old tragically took his life in New York City, and his death was confirmed by his uncle and lawyer Saturday morning.

Swartz, a gifted programmer, helped develop Reddit and founded Demand Progress, a political action group that campaigns against internet censorship.

The young prodigy was arrested in 2011 for illegally downloading over four million documents from protected computers. He allegedly took millions of documents from MIT and pleaded 'not guilty' in September, according to MIT's 'The Tech' paper.

Swartz had hinted that he has been suffering from depression in previous years. In a blog post back in 2007, he wrote: "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.

"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."

That same year he had also blogged in a post titled 'A moment Before Dying': "There is a moment, immediately before life becomes no longer worth living, when the world appears to slow down and all its myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent."

Condolences have been pouring in for Swartz from Reddit users. A tribute was posted by his friend Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing.

"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." Doctorow hinted that Swartz's time in prison may have driving him to commit suicide. "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."