Drew_Wilson 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (303)

• On the post: Trump Pretends To Block State AI Laws; Media Pretends That’s Legal

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2025 @ 02:47pm

  Up here in Canada, the CBC threw that headline in one of their headline crawls on the bottom of the screen the other day. To be fair to the CBC, I can't exactly expect them to be experts in how law works in another country, so there is, at least, a little cover for this massive blunder. Still, it did highlight to me, yet again, that Canadian news organizations simply take a lot of news articles from US sources verbatim without questioning it and regurgitate it on their newscasts and papers.

• On the post: If Your Antitrust Case Depends On Pretending TikTok Doesn’t Exist, It’s Going To Fail

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 25 Nov, 2025 @ 02:57am

  While reading this article, I can't help but think about Google Adsense. A while ago, TechDirt wanted to move away from Adsense and find a competitor to the Adsense network. The effort ended up being fruitless because there was no actual competitor to be had that wasn't just pushing scams. I mean, if you are an independent website, trying to use a third party ad network seems to be a choice between Adsense or nothing for the most part. Yes, Facebook has advertising, but that seems to be off limits to third party websites. So, I'm confused. If there's no actual competition in something like an ad network, how is anti-trust not actually a tool to fix something like that? How is Adsense not a monopolistic power and why can't anti-trust fix that?

• On the post: ‘Stop Killing Games’ Finds More Allies From MPs In The UK

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2025 @ 10:17pm

  I remember PirateSoftware taking quite a credibility hit when he attacked the movement. Kind of disappointed in PirateSoftware for doing that, but some good came out of that when the popularity of the movement increased thanks to that.

• On the post: Marjorie Taylor Greene Becomes The Onion Meme; Criticizes GOP Leaders For Gov’t Shutdown

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2025 @ 01:35am

  Yeah, crappy people, on rare occasions, make good points. This happens. Recognition of this is a sign that you care more about the points being made than the person making them (this is a good thing - especially in this day and age). I encountered this not too long ago when I found out Pierre Poilievre, the insufferable leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, pointed out that Bill C-2 (Canada's warrantless wiretapping bill) is an invasion of privacy. Even some of my right wing acquaintances were shocked when they found out I agreed with him on that point. They were even more floored when they found out that I said he made the right call not to support the bill. Now, this isn't to say that I'm suddenly a die hard Poilievre supporter (I'm most certainly am not), but I know a good position when I see one. I'm also not going to just cheaply hide the fact that I agree with him on something for the sake of partisanship. What I will do is stick to the world where facts and reality matters. Sometimes, that means running into the awkward moment where people you think are scum are making a perfectly valid point. It can be a weird feeling, too. Side note: I'm no fan of MTG.

• On the post: America Is Now The World’s Sundown Town

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2025 @ 03:04pm

  I thought the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the US as a commemoration of the alliance of the two nations. New York happens to be the location in which it resides. I'm guessing I'm missing something.

• On the post: Another Day, Another Age Verification Data Breach: Discord’s Third-Party Partner Leaked Government IDs

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2025 @ 02:20pm

  storing them long term should be illegal

  It won't be. It's far too profitable for companies to sell that data to third party data brokers. That's why they get stored in the first place.

• On the post: The Mainstream Media Is Catastrophically Failing To Meet The Moment

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2025 @ 11:51pm

  That would be true if there was an actual free market. There isn't. Multiple social media sites regularly suppress news links via their algorithms (Facebook, X/Twitter) and Google is strangling traffic to independent publishers through AI Overview and AI Mode. The reality is that users can't find independent sources that offer high quality journalism through the normal channels for the most part simply because those sources are actively being hidden from them. Traditional media sources are holding on to their monopolies on the traditional airwaves. Consumers aren't able to make a free choice of which media to consume because the system acts as though anything other than mainstream media doesn't actually exist.

• On the post: The Mainstream Media Is Catastrophically Failing To Meet The Moment

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2025 @ 04:33pm

  Like Masnick, I've been pulling my hair out over the low quality of mainstream media journalism for some time now. If Joe Biden mumbled once in a debate, that immediately sparks "questions" over the mental state of Biden. Yet, if Trump goes on a senile rant, mainstream media's reaction is to "explain" what he said and "better understand" his point of view. Zero question about the mental competence of Trump. Zero mention that Trump was having yet another senile moment. It's all political cover for any right wing politician. Just today, I was watching reports about the insane rant by Trump, talking about how he intends on using the cities he is targeting for political reasons as military training grounds for military personnel. Trump is literally rehashing the "enemy from within" insanity to justify using the military to attack American's. The media's reaction here in Canada, "Gee, that sounds somewhat concerning. Is there a reason to be worried?" I'm like, "Dude! What the actual fuck is wrong with you??? Is there any actual doubt that this is terrifying? Trump is literally pushing to sick the military on perceived domestic political foes and you are sitting there, navel gazing and rubbing your chins and saying that this is kind of an interesting thing to say." The worst part about this is that I know the damaging implications of all of this normalization. In any sane scenario, the media would be screaming about how the nation is under attack from an insane mad man, but because the mainstream media normalized activity like government disappearing people from the city streets or arresting politicians for basic free speech activity, military takeovers of city streets is now somehow just an "interesting political move". It... seriously makes me want to swear at the media all day long.

• On the post: UK Age Verification Data Confirms What Critics Always Predicted: Mass Migration To Sketchier Sites

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2025 @ 01:46pm

  The situation is much worse than this. At lease one so-called "double blind" age verification company working with large porn sites got busted tracking user's online movements. https://www.freezenet.ca/drew-wilson-was-right-double-blind-age-verification-company-busted-tracking-user-online-movement/ While it may not be the smartest move to go to sketchy unauthorized porn sites, at least those users won't get tracked by these age verification companies.

• On the post: UK Court Ruling Leaves Wikipedia Facing Years Of Uncertainty Under Online Safety Act

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 14 Aug, 2025 @ 12:07am

  Hopefully, when the age verification system inevitably comes crashing down as more and more people circumvent the technology (and this is already happening in many hilarious ways), the government doesn't just decide that anything that can be circumvented wasn't "effective" enough and adds liability onto the sites anyway for not doing a good enough job of either blocking the population or providing an "effective" enough age verification solution. At that point, all bets are off. I actually think that it's possible that the government is dumb enough to do it.

• On the post: NY Appeals Court: Lol, No Of Course You Can’t Sue Social Media For The Buffalo Mass Shooting

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2025 @ 12:45pm

  They could also sue the people who build our roads. After all, those roads likely assisted in the delivery of the technology to the stores in the first place. Perhaps they could also sue the shipping industry. Those planes, trucks, and boats probably delivered that technology as well. Clearly, they are all liable as well.

• On the post: The Moral Imperative Of Clear Language

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2025 @ 07:01pm

  In my writing, I took this approach. I consider it a policy of calling a spade a spade. I referred to Trump as a fascist dictator because he was acting like one. I considered the calling in of military forces to LA as a military takeover of LA. I called what is gripping America fascism because... that's what it is. I referred to X/Twitter as a Nazi bar. In doing so, I can admit that it felt rebellious. It wasn't rebellious because I was using plain language, but rather, it was rebellious against the norms of complicity. What is going on the US is NOT normal by any stretch of the imagination and attempts to try and normalize it through language was just plain dirty. I can say I got some pushback from some people about that language too. I was told that calling Trump a Nazi dictator was very mean and 'make you lose credibility'. Personally, though, I have no regrets doing it. As far as I'm concerned, it's an accurate reflection of the events going on. Trump is locking up political opponents. He is punishing judges for not ruling "correctly". He is utilizing political interference in everything. What's more, he is pushing a far right agenda that cracks down on speech he and his oligarchs don't like. That is Nazi activity through and through.

• On the post: The Conservatives On The Supreme Court Are So Scared Of Nudity, They’ll Throw Out The First Amendment

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2025 @ 04:03pm

  Going to be fun publishing a list of all the websites that get censored because of these age verification laws.

• On the post: The Conservatives On The Supreme Court Are So Scared Of Nudity, They’ll Throw Out The First Amendment

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2025 @ 04:00pm

  There's two unsavoury possibilities that spring to mind for me. First is that the US gets an election in a year and a half to reduce the amount of power the far right has in office. In 3 and a half years, American's could vote out their fascist overlords and elect a sane government. With some governments in other levels already arbitrarily moving elections back when they become unpopular, though, there is some question as to whether or not an election will happen at the end of Trump's term. Even then, it will take a lot of legislation to reverse some of the damage caused by this ruling. The second is waiting until a couple of the far right bastards on the bench finally croaks from old age. The hope is that if a sane government is in power, they will be able to do what Obama didn't and get some sane judges on the bench to start reversing the awful stuff the current SCOTUS has unleashed on the American population. That'll probably take at least a decade to happen and, even then, that'll only happen if the correct conditions are met that there is even a shot at restoring sanity. Otherwise, barring an outright civil war, America is screwed on this front and American's can only fire up their VPNs and TOR to try and get around this thought control.

• On the post: Community And Choice Are Not Bubbles

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2025 @ 09:12pm

  Absolutely agree. What gets lost on the pundits is that people engage with social media for a whole variety of reasons. It's about everything. Some people go on social media to talk about poker. Some people go on social media to talk about games. Others go on social media to discuss art and artistic techniques. You name it, it's on there somewhere. For certain pundits, though, that doesn't count as "real" topics worth looking at. Therefore, they basically blocked it all out of their minds when discussing social media in general and pretend that the only "real" conversations are the ones they personally happen to be interested in.

• On the post: Community And Choice Are Not Bubbles

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2025 @ 09:06pm

  On Twitter/X, at least they get a statistic confirming that someone has “viewed” their post.

  Not sure how those "viewed" stats are even valuable since that platform is packed full of spam botnets.

• On the post: Community And Choice Are Not Bubbles

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2025 @ 12:55pm

  This is just par for the course for mainstream media. As a general rule, mainstream media hates all things internet and social media. So, they do everything to dig deep and make it look as bad as possible. Did someone do something stupid on social media? It's part of a massive trend on social media! Did someone say something mean on social media? Social media is a toxic place completely filled with uncontrollable hate speech! A lot of these media outlets want to go back to the bad old days when they exclusively controlled the microphone and not ordinary people who would otherwise be beholden to every tidbit of information they were willing to tip their hand to. Those days are long gone, but they are still fighting to turn back the hands of time to before the internet was a big thing. I still remember busting an outlet for faking evidence of a "trend" on Tiktok which supposedly featured Joe Biden swearing at people. They breathlessly say that TikTok is doing nothing to fight against fake AI generated video's. Yet, the hit piece was so bad, the screen shots of those "viral videos" on TikTok left the traffic statistics in where some examples got zero likes while others only got two or three. I know Mike reported on several fake "trends" as well that the media were pushing as if it were a real thing when, in fact, it largely wasn't "a thing". Large media outlets will never stop running hit pieces on social media. They've long made it their mission to lie their asses off to make social media seem like an out of control menace to society that must be shut down. The fact that they are attacking Bluesky should be seen as a good development because they are threatened enough by its existence to attack it.

• On the post: Stop Begging Billionaires To Fix Software — Build Your Own

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2025 @ 03:59pm

  I did something similar when I built my news site back in 2013. I approached local newspapers and other local news organizations saying that I have a major background in technology, internet, and digital rights, so I can add a huge amount of value to the news organization with my coverage. The TV news organization said that people aren't interested in the internet because the internet was just a silly little fad that no one cares about (yes, that was in the early 2010's). The newspaper told me to "come back when you right real news". Every other news outlet ignored my pitch of generating news articles related to the internet and technology. The general sense I ended up getting was that the internet was unimportant to them and no one cares about anything related to the internet and technology. So, I built my own site and continued my news writing career after the previous website owners I worked under called it quits. My site rocketed to become the number 2 news website in my entire city. I was beating out whole news rooms by myself which was, not going to lie, ego boosting. When I returned to these news organizations to show that there was interest, I was told "you cheated" before explaining that I was too stupid to pull something like that off. This before they immediately ended the conversation on the spot. So, I said "screw 'em all" and kept working on my site. One of those local newspapers was already forced to declare bankruptcy after. The others have been on the ropes for years now. I have little sympathy for them after the way they treated me.

• On the post: From Defenders To Skeptics: The Sharp Decline In Young Americans’ Support For Free Speech

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 27 May, 2025 @ 03:09pm

  I don't like to sit here and "BSAB" anything, but in this case, it does apply here. As Jacob points out, free speech means protecting speech - even speech that is considered controversial. Jacob is absolutely right to point out that right wing politics have put a significant damper on support for free speech. Free speech, for the far right extremists and some more moderate voices on that side of the political spectrum, is little more than protecting speech that they personally agree with and stamping out all speech they disagree with. It's only allowed free speech if they personally like it. This has, indeed, resulted in some of the decline in support for free speech. The problem is that the left wing politician's currently occupying the government haven't exactly been doing much to support free speech either. This by actively supporting censorship laws pushed by Republican lawmakers (as noted here on multiple occasions). Then there is the push for hate speech laws that are frequently used to stymie speech far beyond targeting science disinformation and hate speech (but frequently in the name of fighting such content in the first place). This research confirms what I (and many writers here on TechDirt) have been warning about for quite some time. Free speech is under considerable threat these days and stamping out free speech for one reason or another has become increasingly a bi-partisan effort where an increasingly diminished number of voices within the halls of government are willing to defend said free speech.

• On the post: Republican Lawmakers Want To Replace The Community Standard For Obscenity With *Their* Own Standard

  

  Drew_Wilson ( profile ), 19 May, 2025 @ 02:56pm

  The Republican party hates free speech. Exhibit #7,426,821

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