Drew_Wilson 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (314)

• On the post: The White House App’s Propaganda Is The Least Alarming Thing About It

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2026 @ 04:09pm

  It's only OK when they do it.

• On the post: Deep Breath: Okay, Let’s Talk About That Controversial DLSS 5 Demo

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 24 Mar, 2026 @ 10:46pm

  This still strikes me as more of a “all AI is bad” crowd grasping at lots of other things to buttress their pushback than anything else.

  I think your over-generalizing the pushback. Yes, there's some of that, but there are a lot of people pointing out that the filter - and it is a filter at the end of the day - overrides the artistic intent of the character faces. A cartoon face does not need to have a filter that puts in peach fuzz hair and pores on the skin. One of the examples that gets used a lot is the Resident Evil examples in the tech demo. The characters have a certain look to them that blends well with the overarching themes. The filter completely overrides it and makes one of the characters turn into a super model with the heavy amounts of air brushing that got applied (and likely part of the meme of photoshopping monsters and male humans and turning them into super models with large boobs with the label "DLSS5 Turns on"). The developers of these games are also split on this. Some are OK with it while others are not. I think there are plenty of people that looked at the tech demo and concluded that the faces looked ugly. Are some of them part of the "all AI is bad" crowd? Sure. Are all of them part of that same crowd? I sincerely doubt it. The only faces in that tech demo that looked like it was improved were the examples from Starfield. Even then, it was a very moderate improvement and nothing revolutionary. I don't think it's speculative to say it's worse when people are reacting to what they see. If there was rumours of DLSS5 adding a filter onto things and no tech demo out there, then yes, you'd have a point that it's speculative. The reality is that there is a tech demo and people are seeing what it is supposed to be doing with their own two eyes. That's not speculating, that's reacting - and the reaction was negative. Anyway, I think you are painting too many people with the same brush in a bid to dismiss the criticism outright. The reality is that there is nuance to the pushback that I think you are glossing over.

• On the post: If You’re Going To Defend AI And Whine About Its Critics, You Should Probably Be Honest About Its Actual Harms

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2026 @ 01:08pm

  I hate to break it to you, but claims that AI has improved have been around for a year or two at least. Yet, the research continues to show either marginal improvement or a complete lack of improvement in the technology itself. Actual research into AI as a software developer shows it's horrendously bad... like, only managing to complete software development tasks 15% of the time bad https://www.freezenet.ca/ai-cant-even-replace-software-engineers-so-why-the-hype/ In fact, more recently, AI was quietly blamed for the Amazon outage back in December: https://www.freezenet.ca/amazon-employees-blames-ai-for-aws-outage-in-december/ Saying AI has rapidly improved is just one of the many tired lines I hear from AI BS artists frequently.

• On the post: Rubio To World: Stop Doing The Exact Same Thing The US Just Did

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2026 @ 03:13pm

  Yeah, privacy is a huge reason why data sovereignty laws are as attractive as they are in countries outside of the US. Right now, the US government is flooding the platforms with subpoenas in a bid to go after anyone daring to publish what amounts to thought crimes against the regime. This as they try and build a massive surveillance system on social media while hoovering up as much data as possible either for private vested interests of data brokers or by the US government trying to silence criticism. It makes no sense that other countries just allow their citizens data to get sucked up by the US surveillance industrial complex so that the US government can further their efforts to carry out human rights violations (deportations, murder, unlawful detention, etc.) A robust federal level privacy law would at least be a good start, but at this stage, other countries are going to need more than that before even rationally thinking of just letting their citizens data to flow so freely. Ditching the dictator currently occupying the white house would be another step along with assurances that fascism is never going to take over like this ever again. That... is a very tall order, of course, but it would be an understandable ask these days given all that has happened at this point. You want our personal data? It's going to take a heck of a lot to gain that trust for rational people. Until then, data sovereignty laws it is.

• On the post: Hackers Expose The Massive Surveillance Stack Hiding Inside Your “Age Verification” Check

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2026 @ 06:06pm

  When I was reporting that Australia's age verification has been a failure, I did have people tell me that I'm being too presumptuous and that I shouldn't be suggesting that all the failures of age verification at that point is an indication that age verification is a failure. After all, they argued, it's too early to tell whether or not it is a success or failure. You can probably imagine my "lolwut?" response to that.

• On the post: Before We Blame AI For Suicide, We Should Admit How Little We Know About Suicide

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2026 @ 02:32pm

  I remember last year when Trump first got elected and things started taking a turn for the worst in the US. I knew I had to push through the devastation going on in the US and keep writing. This without letting such a government coarse me into silence by proxy. It was difficult, but for some of my readers who didn't exactly build up the level of tolerance I had built up over the years to awful news, it was probably worse for them. On social media, someone in my feed said that they were contemplating suicide over all of this. I tried to respond by basically saying, 'don't do it', but the post was deleted before I could try to reach out. Still, I knew suicide is something you just didn't fuck around with. So, for months, I put up disclaimers urging people who were thinking about it to use 988. I put those disclaimers both top and bottom of several of my articles because I knew what I was reporting was absolutely brutal. At one point, someone actually messaged me and complained that I was putting up such disclaimers at all, saying that I was being stupid and dramatic at the same time. When I explained that someone popped up thinking about it and that I wasn't going to just sit by and let something like that happen, they didn't believe me and told me to knock if off. I didn't. Anything that was stressful about US politics got that disclaimer and I did that for several more weeks, just to be absolutely sure. When it was very clear it was no longer necessary, I did eventually stop publishing disclaimers along with US politics related stories. I know some people would say it is an overreaction on my part, but I sure as heck wasn't even going to chance it.

• On the post: How Close Can AI Get To Writing A Techdirt Post?

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2026 @ 08:23pm

  Interesting. Well, if I have a moment in time, I might still run with this kind of experiment. In my case, I'll be doing it from the perspective of someone who doesn't use AI at all and coming in cold. Might be an interesting thought experiment to see how people with little to no exposure to AI content generation can run into problems and what thought processes can contribute to leading to certain outcomes (whether good or bad).

• On the post: How Close Can AI Get To Writing A Techdirt Post?

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2026 @ 03:12pm

  Crud. I was thinking of running a similar experiment to see how well it can handle a Freezenet post. TechDirt beat me to it. Ah well. Should've pulled the trigger sooner, but had a lot on my plate since I don't have staff helping me out with news writing like TechDirt does. One of the things I had long suspected was that it is takes just as much time and effort to come up with a prompt that might make something somewhat passable. Interesting that this was one of the conclusions here.

• On the post: Preserving The Web Is Not The Problem. Losing It Is.

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 17 Feb, 2026 @ 09:09pm

  One of the axioms I've heard over the years is "the Internet never forgets". The problem with that axiom is that it's not really true. It may be applicable for really popular content for a few years, but the internet does, in fact, forget. Digital rot is a very real thing. Had I not preserved a whole stack of articles on my site, I'm willing to bet some of those articles would've simply disappeared from the web completely. I had a heck of a hard time finding some of them so I could repost them. Some were only available on an archived post on the WayBack Machine. Others were still lingering in Google cache. Some were only available on the other website while it was still alive (neither are alive any more). Still, I know some are probably lost forever because I didn't think of archiving everything I wrote when I was first writing news. Had a wrong mindset that the articles would always be there in some form or another. A really big mistake that I have since rectified.

• On the post: News Publishers Are Now Blocking The Internet Archive, And We May All Regret It

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2026 @ 05:06pm

  I completely agree. It's why I personally refuse to put up a paywall on my site in the first place. I see a lot of news organizations paywalling their content and the well off smugly talking about how they happily read this stuff while everyone else does without thanks to the growing economic mess we are in. I see the damage done to society and I said, "Nope, not contributing to that rotten trend." I also personally think TechDirt is on the same page on this one as well.

• On the post: News Publishers Are Now Blocking The Internet Archive, And We May All Regret It

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2026 @ 01:00pm

  I remember one of the pieces of advice I was given was that I had to put up a paywall on my news site. I was told that if people wanted your content, then they would pay for it. Otherwise, my website would always be unprofitable. I rejected that because I knew that news is always going to be a public good that needs to be accessible to all, not just for people who have a lot of cash to burn. Heck, at one point, someone told me that I'm part of the problem of people expecting news to be free because I allow free access. I responded by pointing out that this is a conscious decision because I believed that news is a public good that all should benefit from. Now, I'm sure those same people are telling others that AI is going to scrape your content as well if you don't put up a paywall. In short, business types are putting a LOT of pressure on news websites to paywall EVERYTHING. It seems that they are, sadly, starting to succeed with others.

• On the post: An 18-Million-Subscriber YouTuber Just Explained Section 230 Better Than Every Politician In Washington

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2026 @ 09:32pm

  Tech Policy Press sucks and shouldn't be treated seriously. Hope you enjoy your answer. :)

• On the post: How To Think About AI: Is It The Tool, Or Are You?

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2026 @ 12:28pm

  This is why I tend not to get particularly worked up by those who claim that AI is going to destroy jobs and wipe out the workforce, who will be replaced by bots. It just… doesn’t work that way. At the same time, I find it ridiculous to see people still claiming that the technology itself is no good and does nothing of value.

  I take a much different approach. I point and laugh at the people honestly believing that AI simply does everything better and getting burned by that terrible decision of just giving that work to AI - letting AI just do everything. I've been maintaining a running tally for a while now and that list just keeps growing. It's very useful for whenever people come out and claim that AI does everything perfectly. This is, by no means, proclaiming that nuance is not allowed. This is just laughing at morons who suddenly consider themselves experts when they clearly are not. This while clearly demonstrating that you can't just 'leave it all to AI' which, honestly, is not a terrible message to be sending by any means.

• On the post: DHS Is Hunting Down Trump Critics. The ‘Free Speech’ Warriors Are Mighty Quiet.

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2026 @ 10:50pm

  I sometimes wonder if such users are here because they view TechDirt as their own personal erotica website. They get off getting completely owned like this. I mean, it's a possible explanation for why they keep coming back to get owned again, anyway.

• On the post: Tom Homan To Minneapolis: Look, I Warned You If You Weren’t Nice, We’d Have To Kill Again, And Look What You Made Us Do

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 30 Jan, 2026 @ 04:12pm

  Back to the padded room you go.

• On the post: TikTok Already Getting Shittier Under The Ownership Of Trump’s Billionaire Buddies

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2026 @ 04:05pm

  That is hilarious in a pretty sad way. The original moral panic about TikTok was that it was collecting personal information (even though it wasn't doing anything that was very far removed from what Facebook, Instagram, and others were doing). That and it somehow being a Chinese government mind controlling device for reasons that only makes sense to people pushing that moral panic. As the writers here have also stated, I'm also a strong advocate of broad federal privacy reform because if you are concerned about TikTok collecting personal information, the best place to start is to have a set of standards that everyone must abide by. Then, you'd have standing to go after companies that won't abide by those laws. It's a FAR stronger argument than '[insert platform here] must change the way they do things because I personally think they should!' Now that the US government is doing a big government takeover (you know, just the kind of thing Republican supporters dream of), it's now collecting even more personal information. I'm betting there are some media outlets out there that are somehow OK with that after freaking out about privacy on the platform throughout 2024 and last year.

• On the post: Shift Up’s CEO Says They Need AI Because Of The Chinese Boogeyman

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2026 @ 03:56pm

  Well, that and pathfinding and being able to react to the player to make the game seem more realistic. Opponents driving in other vehicles? That is technically AI. Enemies firing on you while taking cover? That's technically AI. The only caveat is that it's not really the same kind of AI that is involved in generative AI and glorified auto-complete chat bots. It's a much older and simpler AI we're talking about. Your point stands of course, just refining it a little for you. :)

• On the post: Shift Up’s CEO Says They Need AI Because Of The Chinese Boogeyman

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2026 @ 11:11pm

  The CEO is trying to do a weird riff off of the nonsense line of "use AI now or get left behind". It's a way of trying to justify the use of AI by getting rid all of that pesky logical thinking and common sense. That way, you don't have to think about silly things like "is AI actually capable of replacing human beings like this?" or "is the output of AI up to basic quality standards?" There are a LOT of business leaders who only think along the lines of how AI is going to replace the human workforce. They want to be the first to simply use AI to do all the work and cut out all the jobs in the process. This while still magically maintaining the high standards people expect from the products. You can explain all day that this is a wholly unrealistic expectation, but they won't care. Their heads are far too heavily polluted with AI buzzwords and talking points to see even basic level of logic or reason. So, as some of these "leaders" charge full steam ahead, I'm of the opinion of "I say let them crash" because that is the only outcome such thinking eventually leads to. Before you flip out and say "AI still has its uses!", I am fully aware that some people do use it for simple and far more mundane tasks like grammar checking and word restructuring to tighten up language. The thing is, that's not what these business leaders are talking about. They are talking about replacing humans with the mythical AI technology that can do it all better for cheaper. As you know, that technology absolutely does not exist and existing AI is not even in the same universe in terms of the capabilities that these business types are asking for. It's why I never tire of watching people crash and burn when they are too stubborn to see that and charge full steam ahead with an angry "I'll prove you all wrong" attitude. I've tried to explain on multiple occasions that AI is not sentient nor is it a magical button that will do all the work right the first time, so I'll happily point and laugh at people who are suffering from the consequences of their actions in this regard. If the CEO in this story wants to use AI to replace the human workforce with AI, I'd say "let him". I think I won't be the only one pointing and laughing when that decision inevitably blows up in his face.

• On the post: White House Push AI-Altered Images Of Arrested ICE Protesters To Manufacture Cruelty

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2026 @ 05:09pm

  I wouldn't be surprised if when they get caught submitting AI deepfakes for cases, that the response is something along the lines of, "well, that's how the ICE agent felt was going on and that's all you really need to know. Therefore, the protester in question is guilty of the terroristic threat of existing and should be sent to the foreign gulags to be tortured."

• On the post: Game Publisher Bans Working With Devs That Use Any AI, Rather Than Banning Bad Uses Of AI

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2026 @ 02:53am

  Absolutely no know is going to be able to tell the difference by the end of 2026.

  AI was going to eliminate the need to hire artists by the end of 2023. Didn't happen. AI was going to eliminate a vast majority of jobs by the end of 2024. Didn't happen. AI was going to put almost everyone out of work by the end of 2025 and no one was going to distinguish reality from AI by that point in time. Didn't happen. AI predictions like that that go down in flames are a dime a dozen.

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