Artificial intelligence promises to change not just how Americans work, but how societies decide which kinds of work are worthwhile in the first place. When technological change outpaces social judgment, a major capacity of a sophisticated society comes under pressure: the ability to sustain forms of work whose value is not obvious in advance and cannot be justified by necessity alone.

As AI systems diffuse rapidly across the economy, questions about how societies legitimate such work, and how these activities can serve as a supplement to market-based job creation, have taken on a policy relevance that deserves serious attention.

From Prayer to Platforms

That capacity for legitimating work has historically depended in part on how societies deploy economic surplus: the share of resources that can be devoted to activities not strictly required for material survival. In late medieval England, for example, many in the orbit of the church made at least part of their living performing spiritual labor such as saying prayers for the dead and requesting intercessions for patrons. In a society where salvation was a widely shared concern, such activities were broadly accepted as legitimate ways to make a living.

William Langland was one such prayer-sayer. He is known to history only because, unlike nearly all others who did similar work, he left behind a long allegorical religious poem, Piers Plowman, which he composed and repeatedly revised alongside the devotional labor that sustained him. It emerged from the same moral and institutional world in which paid prayer could legitimately absorb time, effort, and resources.

In 21st-century America, Jenny Nicholson earns a sizeable income sitting alone in front of a camera, producing long-form video essays on theme parks, films, and internet subcultures. Yet her audience supports it willingly and few doubt that it creates value of a kind. Where Langland’s livelihood depended on shared theological and moral authority emanating from a Church that was the dominant institution of its day, Nicholson’s depends on a different but equally real form of judgment expressed by individual market participants. And she is just one example of a broader class of creators—streamers, influencers, and professional gamers—whose work would have been unintelligible as a profession until recently.

What links Langland and Nicholson is not the substance of their work or any claim of moral equivalence, but the shared social judgment that certain activities are legitimate uses of economic surplus. Such judgments do more than reflect cultural taste. Historically, they have also shaped how societies adjust to technological change, by determining which forms of work can plausibly claim support when productivity rises faster than what is considered a “necessity” by society.

How Change Gets Absorbed

Technological change has long been understood to generate economic adjustment through familiar mechanisms: by creating new tasks within firms, expanding demand for improved goods and services, and recombining labor in complementary ways. Often, these mechanisms alone can explain how economies create new jobs when technology renders others obsolete. Their operation is well documented, and policies that reduce frictions in these processes—encouraging retraining or easing the entry of innovative firms—remain important in any period of change.

That said, there is no general law guaranteeing that new technologies will create more jobs than they destroy through these mechanisms alone. Alongside labor-market adjustment, societies have also adapted by legitimating new forms of value—activities like those undertaken by Langland and Nicholson—that came to be supported as worthwhile uses of the surplus generated by rising productivity.

This process has typically been examined not as a mechanism of economic adjustment, but through a critical or moralizing lens. From Thorstein Veblen’s account of conspicuous consumption, which treats surplus-supported activity primarily as a vehicle for status competition, to Max Weber’s analysis of how moral and religious worldviews legitimate economic behavior, scholars have often emphasized the symbolic and ideological dimensions of non-essential work. Herbert Marcuse pushed this line of thinking further, arguing that capitalist societies manufacture “false needs” to absorb surplus and assure the continuation of power imbalances. These perspectives offer real insight: uses of surplus are not morally neutral, and new forms of value can be entangled with power, hierarchy, and exclusion.

What they often exclude, however, is the way legitimation of new forms of value can also function to allow societies to absorb technological change without requiring increases in productivity to be translated immediately into conventional employment or consumption. New and expanded ways of using surplus are, in this sense, a critical economic safety valve during periods of rapid change.

Skilled Labor Has Been Here Before

Fears that artificial intelligence is uniquely threatening simply because it reaches into professional or cognitive domains rest on a mistaken historical premise. Episodes of large-scale technological displacement have rarely spared skilled or high-paid forms of labor; often, such work has been among the first affected. The mechanization of craft production in the nineteenth century displaced skilled cobblers, coopers, and blacksmiths, replacing independent artisans with factory systems that required fewer skills, paid lower wages, and offered less autonomy even as new skilled jobs arose elsewhere. These changes were disruptive but they were absorbed largely through falling prices, rising consumption, and new patterns of employment. They did not require societies to reconsider what kinds of activity were worthy uses of surplus: the same things were still produced, just at scale.

Other episodes are more revealing for present purposes. Sometimes, social change has unsettled not just particular occupations but entire regimes through which uses of surplus become legitimate. In medieval Europe, the Church was the one of the largest economic institutions just about everywhere, clerical and quasi-clerical roles like Langland’s offered recognized paths to education, security, status, and even wealth. When those shared beliefs fractured, the Church’s economic role contracted sharply—not because productivity gains ceased but because its claim on so large a share of surplus lost legitimacy.

To date, artificial intelligence has not produced large-scale job displacement, and the limited disruptions that have occurred have largely been absorbed through familiar adjustment mechanisms. But if AI systems begin to substitute for work whose value is justified less by necessity than by judgment or cultural recognition, the more relevant historical analogue may be less the mechanization of craft than the narrowing or collapse of earlier surplus regimes. The central question such technologies raise is not whether skilled labor can be displaced or whether large-scale displacement is possible—both have occurred repeatedly in the historical record—but how quickly societies can renegotiate which activities they are prepared to treat as legitimate uses of surplus when change arrives at unusual speed.

Time Compression and its Stakes

In this respect, artificial intelligence does appear unusual. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT have diffused through society at a pace far faster than most earlier general-purpose technologies. ChatGPT was widely reported to have reached roughly 100 million users within two months of its public release and similar tools have shown comparably rapid uptake.

That compression matters. Much surplus has historically flowed through familiar institutions—universities, churches, museums, and other cultural bodies—that legitimate activities whose value lies in learning, spiritual rewards or meaning rather than immediate output. Yet such institutions are not fixed. Periods of rapid technological change often place them under strain–something evident today for many–exposing disagreements about purpose and authority. Under these conditions, experimentation with new forms of surplus becomes more important, not less. Most proposed new forms of value fail, and attempts to predict which will succeed have a poor historical record—from the South Sea Bubble to more recent efforts to anoint digital assets like NFTs as durable sources of wealth. Experimentation is not a guarantee of success; it is a hedge. Not all claims on surplus are benign, and waste is not harmless. But when technological change moves faster than institutional consensus, the greater danger often lies not in tolerating too many experiments, but in foreclosing them too quickly.

Artificial intelligence does not require discarding all existing theories of change. What sets modern times apart is the speed with which new capabilities become widespread, shortening the interval in which those judgments are formed. In this context, surplus that once supported meaningful, if unconventional, work may instead be captured by grifters, legally barred from legitimacy (by say, outlawing a new art form) or funneled into bubbles. The risk is not waste alone, but the erosion of the cultural and institutional buffers that make adaptation possible.

The challenge for policymakers is not to pre-ordain which new forms of value deserve support but to protect the space in which judgment can evolve. They need to realize that they simply cannot make the world entirely safe, legible and predictable: whether they fear technology overall or simply seek to shape it in the “right” way, they will not be able to predict the future. That means tolerating ambiguity and accepting that many experiments will fail with negative consequences. In this context, broader social barriers that prevent innovation in any field–professional licensing, limits on free expression, overly zealous IP laws, regulatory bars on the entry to small firms–deserve a great deal of scrutiny. Even if the particular barriers in question have nothing to do with AI itself, they may retard the development of surplus sinks necessary to economic adjustment. In a period of compressed adjustment, the capacity to let surplus breathe and value be contested may well determine whether economies bend or break.

Eli Lehrer is the President of the R Street Institute.

Peter Mandelson—the former UK cabinet minister who was just sacked as Britain’s ambassador to the United States over newly revealed emails with Jeffrey Epstein—has found a novel way to avoid answering questions about why he told a convicted sex offender “your friends stay with you and love you” and urged him to “fight for early release.” He got the UK press regulator to send a memo to all UK media essentially telling them to leave him alone.

The National published what they describe as the “secret notice” that went out:

CONFIDENTIAL – STRICTLY NOT FOR PUBLICATION: Ipso has asked us to circulate the following advisory:

Ipso has today been contacted by a representative acting on behalf of Peter Mandelson.

Mr Mandelson’s representatives state that he does not wish to speak to the media at this time. He requests that the press do not take photos or film, approach, or contact him via phone, email, or in-person. His representatives ask that any requests for his comment are directed to [REDACTED]

We are happy to make editors aware of his request. We note the terms of Clause 2 (Privacy) and 3 (Harassment) of the Editors’ Code, and in particular that Clause 3 states that journalists must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or photographing individuals once asked to desist, unless justified in the public interest.

Clauses 2 and 3 of the UK Editor’s Code—the privacy and harassment provisions—exist primarily to protect genuinely vulnerable people from press intrusion. Grieving families. Crime victims. People suffering genuine harassment.

Mandelson is invoking them to avoid answering questions about his documented friendship with one of history’s most notorious pedophiles—a friendship so extensive and problematic that it just cost him his job as ambassador to the United States, days before a presidential state visit.

According to Politico, the UK Foreign Office withdrew Mandelson “with immediate effect” after emails showed the relationship was far deeper than previously known:

In a statement the U.K. Foreign Office said Mandelson had been withdrawn as ambassador “with immediate effect” after emails showed “the depth and extent” of his relationship with Epstein was “materially different from that known at the time of his appointment.”

“In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information,” the statement added.

So we have a senior political figure who just got fired over revelations that he told a convicted sex offender his prosecution was “wrongful” and should be challenged, who maintained this friendship for years longer than he’d admitted, and his response is to invoke press harassment protections?

The notice does include the important qualifier “unless justified in the public interest.” And it’s hard to imagine a clearer case of public interest: a senior diplomat, just sacked from his post, over previously undisclosed communications with a convicted pedophile, in which he expressed support for challenging that pedophile’s conviction. If that’s not public interest, the term has no meaning.

But the mere act of circulating this notice creates a chilling effect. It puts journalists on notice that pursuing this story could result in complaints to the regulator. It’s using the machinery of press regulation as a shield against legitimate accountability journalism.

Now, to be fair, one could imagine scenarios where even a disgraced public figure might legitimately invoke harassment protections—it wasn’t that long ago there was a whole scandal in the UK with journalists hacking the voicemails of famous people. But that’s not what’s happening here. Mandelson is invoking these provisions to avoid being asked questions at all. “Please don’t inquire about why I told a convicted pedophile his prosecution was wrongful” is not the kind of harm these rules were designed to prevent.

This is who Mandelson has always been: someone who sees regulatory and governmental machinery as tools to be deployed on behalf of whoever he’s serving at the moment. Back in 2009, we covered how he returned from a vacation with entertainment industry mogul David Geffen and almost immediately started pushing for aggressive new copyright enforcement measures, including kicking people off the internet for file sharing. As we wrote at the time, he had what we called a “sudden conversion” to Hollywood’s position on internet enforcement that happened to coincide suspiciously with his socializing with entertainment industry executives.

Back then, the machinery was deployed to serve entertainment executives who wanted harsher copyright enforcement. Now it’s being deployed to serve Mandelson himself.

There’s a broader pattern here that goes beyond one UK politician. The Epstein revelations have been remarkable not just for what they’ve revealed about who associated with him, but for how consistently the response from the powerful has been to deflect, deny, and deploy every available mechanism to avoid genuine accountability. Some have used their media platforms to try to reshape the narrative. Some have simply refused to comment.

Mandelson is trying to use the press regulatory system itself.

It’s worth noting that The National chose to publish the “confidential – strictly not for publication” memo anyway, explicitly citing the public interest. Good for them. Because if there’s one thing that absolutely serves the public interest, it’s shining a light on attempts by the powerful to use the systems meant to protect the vulnerable as shields for their own accountability.

Mandelson’s representatives say he “does not wish to speak to the media at this time.” That’s his right to request—but no media should have to agree to his terms. Weaponizing press regulation to create a cone of silence around questions of obvious public interest is something else entirely. It’s elite impunity dressed up in the language of press ethics.

Technically — TECHNICALLY! — we still have a system that relies on three co-equal branches to ensure that any single branch can’t steamroll the rest of the system (along with the nation it’s supposed to serve) to seize an unequal amount of power.

Technically.

What we’re seeing now is something else entirely. The judicial branch is headed by people who are willing to give the executive branch what it wants, so long as the executive branch is headed by the Republican party. The legislative branch — fully compromised by MAGA bootlickers — has decided to simply not do its job, allowing the executive branch to seize even more power. The executive branch is now just a throne for a king — a man who feels he shouldn’t have to answer to anyone — not even his voting bloc — so long as he remains in power.

The courts can act as a check against executive overreach. But as we’ve seen time and time again, this position means nothing if you’re powerless to enforce it. And that has led to multiple executive officials telling the courts to go fuck themselves when they hand down rulings the administration doesn’t like. A current sitting appellate judge no less made a name for himself in the Trump administration by demonstrating his contempt for the judicial system he’s now an integral part of.

Only good things can come from this! MAGA indeed!

And while this is only one person’s retelling their experience of being caught in the gears of Trump’s anti-brown people activities, it’s illustrative of what little it matters that there are three co-equal branches when one branch makes it clear on a daily basis that it considers itself to be more equal than the rest of them. (via Kathleen Clark on Bluesky)

This is from a sworn statement [PDF] in ongoing litigation against the federal government, as told by “O.,” a Guatemalan resident of Minnesota who has both a pending asylum application as well as a Juvenile Status proceeding still undergoing in the US. None of that mattered to ICE officers, who arrested him in January 2026 and — within 24 hours — shipped him off to a detention center more than a thousand miles from his home.

O. was denied meals, access to phones, access to legal representation, stuffed into overcrowded cells, and generally mistreated by the government that once might have honestly considered the merits of his asylum application.

But the real dirt is this part of the sworn statement, which again exposes this administration’s complete disinterest in adhering to orders from US courts, much less even paying the merest of lip service to rights long considered to be derived from none other than the “Creator” himself.

ICE did not tell me that my attorney had been trying to call me and contact me while I was in Texas. They didn’t tell me my attorney Kim, had retained another attorney, Kira Kelley, to file a habeas petition on my behalf, or that a court had granted it and ordered my release. They just kept holding me there and occasionally trying to get me to self-deport.

[…]

I was put in a cold cell where I had to sleep on the bare cement floor. Around 10 in the morning my cellmate asked to speak to an ICE officer. Three officers came into the cell so I had a chance to speak to them too. One officer told me that I “had no chance of returning to Minnesota” and that “the best thing for [me] is self-deportation.” She told me that if I fought my case, I would spend two to three more months here in El Paso. She offered me $2600 to self-deport. I refused. I wanted to talk to my attorney. They didn’t tell me the judge had already ordered my release and return to Minnesota. If I hadn’t managed to talk to my attorney who told me a while back that I was ordered released, I might have given up at this point and signed the self deportation forms because the conditions were so unbearable.

So… you see the problem. A court can order a release. But the court relies on the government to carry out this instruction. If it doesn’t, the court likely won’t know for days or weeks or months. At that point, a new set of rights abuses will have been inflicted on people who should have been freed. When the government is finally asked to answer for this, it will again engage in a bunch of bluster and obfuscation, forcing the court system to treat the administration like a member of the system of checks and balances even when it’s immediately clear the executive branch has no desire to be checked and/or balanced.

While more judges are now treating the executive branch as a hostile force unwilling to behave honestly or recognize restraints on its power, the imbalance continues to shift in the administration’s favor, largely because it can engage in abusive acts at scale, while the court is restrained to the cases presented to it.

But if you’re outside of the system, you can clearly see what’s happening and see what the future holds if one-third of the government refuses to do its job (the GOP-led Congress) and the other third can’t handle the tidal wave of abuses being presented to it daily. The executive branch will become a kingdom that fears nothing and answers to no one. But the bigger problem is this: most Americans will see this and understand that this will ultimately destroy democracy. Unfortunately, there’s a significant number of voters who actually welcome these developments, figuring it’s better to lick the boots of someone who prefers to rule in hell, rather than serve the United States.

Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice for any professional who needs to handle data and documents. It comes with many new features that will make you more productive in every stage of development, whether it’s processing paperwork or creating presentations from scratch – whatever your needs are. Office Pro comes with MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, Publisher, and Access. Microsoft Windows 11 Pro is exactly that. This operating system is designed with the modern professional in mind. Whether you are a developer who needs a secure platform, an artist seeking a seamless experience, or an entrepreneur needing to stay connected effortlessly, Windows 11 Pro is your solution. The Ultimate Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows + Windows 11 Pro Bundle is on sale for $44.97 for a limited time.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Over the years, we’ve written approximately one million words explaining why Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is essential to how the internet functions. We’ve corrected politicians who lie about it. We’ve debunked myths spread by mainstream media outlets that should know better. We’ve explained, re-explained, and then explained again why gutting this law would be catastrophic for online speech.

And now I find myself in the somewhat surreal position of saying: you know who nailed this explanation better than most policy experts, pundits, and certainly better than any sitting member of Congress? A YouTuber named Cr1TiKaL.

If you’re not familiar with Charles “Cr1TiKaL” White Jr., he runs the penguinz0 YouTube channel with nearly 18 million subscribers and over 12 billion total views. He’s known for deadpan commentary on internet culture and video games. He’s not a policy wonk. He’s not a lawyer. He’s just a guy who apparently bothered to actually understand what Section 230 says and does—something that puts him leagues ahead of the United States Congress.

In this 13-minute video responding to actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s call to “sunset” Section 230, Cr1TiKaL laid out the case for why 230 matters with a clarity that most mainstream coverage hasn’t managed in a decade:

Dismantling section 230 would fundamentally change the internet as you know it. And that’s not an exaggeration to say it. Put it even more simply, section 230 allows goobers like me to post whatever they want, saying whatever they want, and the platform itself is not liable for whatever I’ve made or said. 

That is on me personally. 

The platform isn’t going to be, you know, fucking dragged through the streets with legs spread like a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey for it and getting blasted by lawsuits or whatever. Now, of course, there are limitations in place when it comes to illegal content, things that actually break the law. That is, of course, a very different set of circumstances. That’s a different can of worms, and that’s handled differently. But it should be obvious why section 230 is so important because if these platforms were held liable for every single thing people post on their platforms, they would get into a lot of hot water and they would just not allow people to post things. Full stop. because it would be too dangerous to do so. They would need to micromanage and control every single thing that hits the platform in order to protect themselves. No matter how you spin it, this would ruin the internet. It’s a pile of dogshit. No matter how much perfume gets sprayed on it or how they want to repackage it, it still stinks. 

Yes, the metaphors are colorful. But the underlying point is exactly correct. Section 230 places liability where it belongs: on the person who actually created the content. Not on the platform that hosts it. This is how the entire internet works. Every comment section, every social media post, every forum—all of it depends on this basic principle.

Also, he actually reads the 26 words in the video! This is something that so many other critics of 230 skip over, because then they can pretend it says things it doesn’t say.

And unlike the politicians who keep pretending this is some kind of special gift to “Big Tech,” Cr1TiKaL correctly notes that 230 protects everyone:

This would affect literally every platform that has anything user submitted in any capacity at all. 

Every. Single. One. Your local newspaper’s comment section. The neighborhood Facebook group. The subreddit for your favorite hobby. The Discord server where you talk about video games. The email you forward. All of it.

He’s also refreshingly clear-eyed about why politicians from both parties keep attacking 230:

Since the advent of the internet, section 230 has been a target for people that want to control your speech and infringe on your First Amendment rights.

This observation tracks with what we’ve pointed out repeatedly: the bipartisan hatred of Section 230 is one of the most remarkable examples of political unity in modern American governance—and it’s driven largely by politicians who want platforms to moderate content in ways that favor their particular political preferences.

Democrats have attacked 230 claiming it enables “misinformation” and hate speech. Republicans have attacked it claiming it enables “censorship” of conservative voices. Both cannot simultaneously be true, and yet both parties have introduced legislation to gut the law. Cr1TiKaL captures this perfectly:

When Democrats were in charge, it caught a lot of scrutiny, claiming that it was enabling the spread of racism and harming children. With Republicans in power, they’re claiming that it’s spreading misinformation and anti-semitism. This is a bipartisan punching bag that they desperately want to just beat down.

The critics always trot out the same tired arguments about algorithms and echo chambers and extremism. As if removing 230 would somehow make speech better rather than making it disappear entirely or become heavily controlled by whoever has the most money and lawyers. Cr1TiKaL cuts right through this:

There are people that are paying a lot of money to try and plant this idea in your brain that section 230 is a bad thing. It only leads to things like extremism and conspiracy theories and demonization and that kind of thing. That’s not true. 

Anyone who stops and thinks about this for even just a moment, firing on a few neurons, should be able to recognize how outrageous this proposal is. How would shutting down conversation and shutting down the ability to express thoughts and opinions somehow help combat the rise of extremism and conspiracies? that would only exacerbate the problem. Censorship doesn’t solve these issues. It makes them worse. 

He even anticipates the point we’ve made countless times about what the internet would look like without 230:

Platforms would not allow just completely unfiltered usage of normal people expressing their thoughts because those thoughts might go against the official narrative from the curated source and then the curated source might go after the platform saying this is defamatory. These people have just said something hosted on your platform and we’re coming after you with lawsuits. So they just wouldn’t allow it. 

This is a point we keep repeating and you never hear in the actual policy debates, because supporters of a 230 repeal have no answer for it beyond “nuh-uh.”

The people who most want to control online speech are exactly the people you’d expect: governments and powerful interests who don’t like being criticized. Section 230 is one of the things standing in their way.

And when critics inevitably dust off the “think of the children” argument, Cr1TiKaL delivers the response that shouldn’t be controversial but apparently is:

Be a parent. It is not the internet’s job to cater to your lack of parenting by just letting your kid online. Fucking lazy trash ass parents just sit a kid in front of a computer or an iPad and then are stunned when apparently they find bad shit. Be a parent. Be involved in your kids’ life. Raise your children. Don’t make it the internet’s job to do that for you. 

Is this delivered with the diplomatic nuance of a congressional hearing? No. Is it correct? Absolutely. The “protect the children” argument for dismantling 230 has always been a dodge—a way to make critics of the bill seem heartless while ignoring that Section 230 doesn’t protect illegal content and maybe, just maybe, the primary responsibility for what media children consume should rest with the adults responsible for those children.

We’ve been writing about Section 230 for years, trying to explain to policymakers and the general public why it matters. And most of the time, it feels like shouting into the void. Politicians keep lying about it. Journalists keep getting it wrong. The mythology around 230 persists no matter how many times it gets corrected.

And we’ve heard from plenty of younger people who now believe that 230 is bad. I recently guest taught a college class where students were split into two groups—one to argue in favor of 230 and one against—and I was genuinely dismayed when the group told to argue in favor of 230 argue that 230 “once made sense” but doesn’t any more.

So there’s something genuinely hopeful about seeing a young creator with an audience of nearly 18 million people—an audience that skews young and is probably not spending a lot of time reading policy papers—get it right. Not just right in a general sense, but right in the specifics. He read the law. He understood what it does. He correctly identified why it matters and who benefits from dismantling it.

Maybe the generation that grew up on the internet actually understands what’s at stake when politicians threaten to fundamentally reshape how it works. Maybe they’re not buying the moral panic narratives that have been trotted out to justify every bad piece of tech legislation for the past decade.

Or maybe I’m being optimistic. Either way, Cr1TiKaL’s video is worth watching. It’s profane, it’s casual, and it’s more correct about Section 230 than anything you’ll hear from the halls of Congress.

We told you this was coming months ago.

The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) says it has initiated a broad investigation of Netflix’s business practices and it’s planned $82.7 billion merger with Warner Brothers. The Trump DOJ’s pretense is that they’re just suddenly really concerned about media consolidation and monopoly power (you’re to ignore the U.S. right wing’s generational and indisputable quest to coddle and protect monopoly power across telecom, energy, air travel, banking, and countless other industries):

“Questioning how Netflix competes with rivals suggests the department is looking at whether its planned Warner deal could entrench its market power, or lead to a monopoly in the future. U.S. law gives enforcers broad power to oppose mergers that could lead to a monopoly.”

In reality, the Trump administration has made it extremely clear they’re hoping to scuttle the Netflix deal to help Larry Ellison acquire Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. If they can’t kill the deal, they aspire to at least leverage the merger approval process to force Netflix executives to further debase themselves before the Trump administration, which I suspect they’ll all be happy to do.

It’s part of a longstanding trend by Trumpism to pretend that they’re engaged in populist antitrust reform, claims historically propped up by a long list of useful idiots across the partisan spectrum, and parroted by a growing coalition of right wing propaganda outlets. This bogus populism helps obfuscate what’s really just some of the worst corruption America has ever seen (which is really saying something).

The original (paywalled) Wall Street Journal report (and this aggregated Reuters recap) dutifully help sell the claim that the DOJ is also “investigating” Ellison’s Paramount/Skydance, whose Warner Brothers acquisition bid was repeatedly rejected by the Warner board over worries about dodgy financing and Saudi money involvement:

“The WSJ reported that the DOJ is also reviewing Paramount’s proposed acquisition bid, which Warner Bros’ board unanimously rejected by labeling it “inadequate” and “not in the best interests” of shareholders.”

The outlets fail to remind you that there is generous reporting discussing how Larry Ellison and Trump have had extensive meetings discussing who Larry Ellison would fire on Trump’s behalf should he take control of CNN. They also fail to remind you that the right wing “press,” with Trump’s help, has been engaged in a broad effort to undermine the Netflix merger chances using false claims.

After Warner Brothers balked at Larry’s competing bid and a hostile takeover attempt, Larry tried to sue Warner Brothers. With that not going anywhere, Larry, MAGA, and the Heritage Foundation (of Project 2025 fame) have since joined forces to try and attack the Netflix merger across right wing media, falsely claiming that “woke” Netflix is attempting a “cultural takeover” that must be stopped for the good of humanity:

More recently that included scripted questions provided by the Heritage Foundation at a Congressional hearing, where lawmakers like Republican Senator Josh Hawley resorted to bogus trans panic attacks to try and paint Netflix as some sort of vile leftist cabal.

As we keep noting, ideally a functional regulator would block all additional media consolidation, since these megadeals are consistently terrible for labor, consumers, and product quality (see: Warner Brothers entire corporate history since 2000).

That’s clearly not happening under a Trump administration that has lobotomized all key regulators. So ideally, while not great, Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is the best of a bunch of bad options. It’s arguably notably better than furthering Larry Ellison’s obvious plan to gobble up CBS, TikTok, and CNN, and turn what’s left of America’s already dodgy corporate media into Hungary-esque state television that lavishes hollow praise on our mad idiot king.

Because we’ve already let media consolidation run amok (thanks to the Trump administration’s attack on bipartisan media consolidation limits), our shitty corporate press is incapable of explaining to the public that the Trump DOJ inquiry into Netflix isn’t being conducted in good faith. It’s a perfect circle of greed, regulatory capture, and corruption that will ramp up in the weeks to come.

EFF is against age gating and age verification mandates, and we hope we’ll win in getting existing ones overturned and new ones prevented. But mandates are already in effect, and every day many people are asked to verify their age across the web, despite prominent cases of sensitive data getting leaked in the process.

At some point, you may have been faced with the decision yourself: should I continue to use this service if I have to verify my age? And if so, how can I do that with the least risk to my personal information? This is our guide to navigating those decisions, with information on what questions to ask about the age verification options you’re presented with, and answers to those questions for some of the top most popular social media sites. Even though there’s no way to implement mandated age gates in a way that fully protects speech and privacy rights, our goal here is to help you minimize the infringement of your rights as you manage this awful situation.

Follow the Data

Since we know that leaks happen despite the best efforts of software engineers, we generally recommend submitting the absolute least amount of data possible. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be possible for everyone. Even facial age estimation solutions where pictures of your face never leave your device, offering some protection against data leakage, are not a good option for all users: facial age estimation works less well for people of color, trans and nonbinary people, and people with disabilities. There are some systems that use fancy cryptography so that a digital ID saved to your device won’t tell the website anything more than if you meet the age requirement, but access to that digital ID isn’t available to everyone or for all platforms. You may also not want to register for a digital ID and save it to your phone, if you don’t want to take the chance of all the information on it being exposed upon request of an over-zealous verifier, or you simply don’t want to be a part of a digital ID system

If you’re given the option of selecting a verification method and are deciding which to use, we recommend considering the following questions for each process allowed by each vendor:

• Data: What info does each method require?
• Access: Who can see the data during the course of the verification process?
• Retention: Who will hold onto that data after the verification process, and for how long?
• Audits: How sure are we that the stated claims will happen in practice? For example, are there external audits confirming that data is not accidentally leaked to another site along the way? Ideally these will be in-depth, security-focused audits by specialized auditors like NCC Group or Trail of Bits, instead of audits that merely certify adherence to standards. 
• Visibility: Who will be aware that you’re attempting to verify your age, and will they know which platform you’re trying to verify for?

We attempt to provide answers to these questions below. To begin, there are two major factors to consider when answering these questions: the tools each platform uses, and the overall system those tools are part of.

In general, most platforms offer age estimation options like face scans as a first line of age assurance. These vary in intrusiveness, but their main problem is inaccuracy, particularly for marginalized users. Third-party age verification vendors Private ID and k-ID offer on-device facial age estimation, but another common vendor, Yoti, sends the image to their servers during age checks by some of the biggest platforms. This risks leaking the images themselves, and also the fact that you’re using that particular website, to the third party. 

Then, there’s the document-based verification services, which require you to submit a hard identifier like a government-issued ID. This method thus requires you to prove both your age and your identity. A platform can do this in-house through a designated dataflow, or by sending that data to a third party. We’ve already seen examples of how this can fail. For example, Discord routed users’ ID data through its general customer service workflow so that a third-party vendor could perform manual review of verification appeals. No one involved ever deleted users’ data, so when the system was breached, Discord had to apologize for the catastrophic disclosure of nearly 70,000 photos of users’ ID documents. Overly long retention periods expose documents to risk of breaches and historical data requests. Some document verifiers have retention periods that are needlessly long. This is the case with Incode, which provides ID verification for Tiktok. Incode holds onto images forever by default, though TikTok should automatically start the deletion process on your behalf.

Some platforms offer alternatives, like proving that you own a credit card, or asking for your email to check if it appears in databases associated with adulthood (like home mortgage databases). These tend to involve less risk when it comes to the sensitivity of the data itself, especially since credit cards can be replaced, but in general still undermine anonymity and pseudonymity and pose a risk of tracking your online activity. We’d prefer to see more assurances across the board about how information is handled.

Each site offers users a menu of age assurance options to choose from. We’ve chosen to present these options in the rough order that we expect most people to prefer. Jump directly to a platform to learn more about its age checks:

• Meta – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads
• Google – Gmail, YouTube
• TikTok
• Everywhere Else

Meta – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads

Inferred Age

If Meta can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification screen. Meta, which runs Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, first tries to use information you’ve posted to guess your age, like looking at “Happy birthday!” messages. It’s a creepy reminder that they already have quite a lot of information about you.

If Meta cannot guess your age, or if Meta infers you’re too young, it will next ask you to verify your age using either facial age estimation, or by uploading your photo ID. 

Face Scan

If you choose to use facial age estimation, you’ll be sent to Yoti, a third-party verification service. Your photo will be uploaded to their servers during this process. Yoti claims that “as soon as an age has been estimated, the facial image is immediately and permanently deleted.” Though it’s not as good as not having that data in the first place, Yoti’s security measures include a bug bounty program and annual penetration testing. Researchers from Mint Secure found that Yoti’s app and website are filled with trackers, so the fact that you’re verifying your age could be not only shared to Yoti, but leaked to third-party data brokers as well. 

You may not want to use this option if you’re worried about third parties potentially being able to know you’re trying to verify your age with Meta. You also might not want to use this if you’re worried about a current picture of your face accidentally leaking—for example, if elements in the background of your selfie might reveal your current location. On the other hand, if you consider a selfie to be less sensitive than a photograph of your ID, this option might be better. If you do choose (or are forced to) use the face check system, be sure to snap your selfie without anything you’d be concerned with identifying your location or embarrassing you in the background in case the image leaks.

Upload ID

If Yoti’s age estimation decides your face looks too young, or if you opt out of facial age estimation, your next recourse is to send Meta a photo of your ID. Meta sends that photo to Yoti to verify the ID. Meta says it will hold onto that ID image for 30 days, then delete it. Meanwhile, Yoti claims it will delete the image immediately after verification. Of course, bugs and process oversights exist, such as accidentally replicating information in logs or support queues, but at least they have stated processes. Your ID contains sensitive information such as your full legal name and home address. Using this option not only runs the (hopefully small, but never nonexistent) risk of that data getting leaked through errors or hacking, but it also lets Meta see the information needed to tie your profile to your identity—which you may not want. If you don’t want Meta to know your name and where you live, or rely on both Meta and Yoti to keep to their deletion promises, this option may not be right for you.

Google – Gmail, YouTube 

Inferred Age

If Google can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification screen. Your Google account is typically connected to your YouTube account, so if (like mine) your YouTube account is old enough to vote, you may not need to verify your Google account at all. Google first uses information it already knows to try to guess your age, like how long you’ve had the account and your YouTube viewing habits. It’s yet another creepy reminder of how much information these corporations have on you, but at least in this case they aren’t likely to ask for even more identifying data.

If Google cannot guess your age, or decides you’re too young, Google will next ask you to verify your age. You’ll be given a variety of options for how to do so, with availability that will depend on your location and your age.

Google’s methods to assure your age include ID verification, facial age estimation, verification by proxy, and digital ID. To prove you’re over 18, you may be able to use facial age estimation, give Google your credit card information, or tell a third-party provider your email address.

Face Scan

If you choose to use facial age estimation, you’ll be sent to a website run by Private ID, a third-party verification service. The website will load Private ID’s verifier within the page—this means that your selfie will be checked without any images leaving your device. If the system decides you’re over 18, it will let Google know that, and only that. Of course, no technology is perfect—should Private ID be mandated to target you specifically, there’s nothing to stop it from sending down code that does in fact upload your image, and you probably won’t notice. But unless your threat model includes being specifically targeted by a state actor or Private ID, that’s unlikely to be something you need to worry about. For most people, no one else will see your image during this process. Private ID will, however, be told that your device is trying to verify your age with Google and Google will still find out if Private ID thinks that you’re under 18.

If Private ID’s age estimation decides your face looks too young, you may next be able to decide if you’d rather let Google verify your age by giving it your credit card information, photo ID, or digital ID, or by letting Google send your email address to a third-party verifier.

Email Usage

If you choose to provide your email address, Google sends it on to a company called VerifyMy. VerifyMy will use your email address to see if you’ve done things like get a mortgage or paid for utilities using that email address. If you use Gmail as your email provider, this may be a privacy-protective option with respect to Google, as Google will then already know the email address associated with the account. But it does tell VerifyMy and its third-party partners that the person behind this email address is looking to verify their age, which you may not want them to know. VerifyMy uses “proprietary algorithms and external data sources” that involve sending your email address to “trusted third parties, such as data aggregators.” It claims to “ensure that such third parties are contractually bound to meet these requirements,” but you’ll have to trust it on that one—we haven’t seen any mention of who those parties are, so you’ll have no way to check up on their practices and security. On the bright side, VerifyMy and its partners do claim to delete your information as soon as the check is completed.

Credit Card Verification

If you choose to let Google use your credit card information, you’ll be asked to set up a Google Payments account. Note that debit cards won’t be accepted, since it’s much easier for many debit cards to be issued to people under 18. Google will then charge a small amount to the card, and refund it once it goes through. If you choose this method, you’ll have to tell Google your credit card info, but the fact that it’s done through Google Payments (their regular card-processing system) means that at least your credit card information won’t be sitting around in some unsecured system. Even if your credit card information happens to accidentally be leaked, this is a relatively low-risk option, since credit cards come with solid fraud protection. If your credit card info gets leaked, you should easily be able to dispute fraudulent charges and replace the card.

Digital ID

If the option is available to you, you may be able to use your digital ID to verify your age with Google. In some regions, you’ll be given the option to use your digital ID. In some cases, it’s possible to only reveal your age information when you use a digital ID. If you’re given that choice, it can be a good privacy-preserving option. Depending on the implementation, there’s a chance that the verification step will “phone home” to the ID provider (usually a government) to let them know the service asked for your age. It’s a complicated and varied topic that you can learn more about by visiting EFF’s page on digital identity.

Upload ID

Should none of these options work for you, your final recourse is to send Google a photo of your ID. Here, you’ll be asked to take a photo of an acceptable ID and send it to Google. Though the help page only states that your ID “will be stored securely,” the verification process page says ID “will be deleted after your date of birth is successfully verified.” Acceptable IDs vary by country, but are generally government-issued photo IDs. We like that it’s deleted immediately, though we have questions about what Google means when it says your ID will be used to “improve [its] verification services for Google products and protect against fraud and abuse.” No system is perfect, and we can only hope that Google schedules outside audits regularly.

TikTok

Inferred Age

If TikTok can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification notification. TikTok first tries to use information you’ve posted to estimate your age, looking through your videos and photos to analyze your face and listen to your voice. By uploading any videos, TikTok believes you’ve given it consent to try to guess how old you look and sound.

If TikTok decides you’re too young, appeal to revoke their age decision before the deadline passes. If TikTok cannot guess your age, or decides you’re too young, it will automatically revoke your access based on age—including either restricting features or deleting your account. To get your access and account back, you’ll have a limited amount of time to verify your age. As soon as you see the notification that your account is restricted, you’ll want to act fast because in some places you’ll have as little as 23 days before the deadline passes.

When you get that notification, you’re given various options to verify your age based on your location.

Face Scan

If you’re given the option to use facial age estimation, you’ll be sent to Yoti, a third-party verification service. Your photo will be uploaded to their servers during this process. Yoti claims that “as soon as an age has been estimated, the facial image is immediately and permanently deleted.” Though it’s not as good as not having that data in the first place, Yoti’s security measures include a bug bounty program and annual penetration testing. However, researchers from Mint Secure found that Yoti’s app and website are filled with trackers, so the fact that you’re verifying your age could be leaked not only to Yoti, but to third-party data brokers as well.

You may not want to use this option if you’re worried about third parties potentially being able to know you’re trying to verify your age with TikTok. You also might not want to use this if you’re worried about a current picture of your face accidentally leaking—for example, if elements in the background of your selfie might reveal your current location. On the other hand, if you consider a selfie to be less sensitive than a photograph of your ID or your credit card information, this option might be better. If you do choose (or are forced to) use the face check system, be sure to snap your selfie without anything you’d be concerned with identifying your location or embarrassing you in the background in case the image leaks.

Credit Card Verification

If you have a credit card in your name, TikTok will accept that as proof that you’re over 18. Note that debit cards won’t be accepted, since it’s much easier for many debit cards to be issued to people under 18. TikTok will charge a small amount to the credit card, and refund it once it goes through. It’s unclear if this goes through their regular payment process, or if your credit card information will be sent through and stored in a separate, less secure system. Luckily, these days credit cards come with solid fraud protection, so if your credit card gets leaked, you should easily be able to dispute fraudulent charges and replace the card. That said, we’d rather TikTok provide assurances that the information will be processed securely.

Credit Card Verification of a Parent or Guardian

Sometimes, if you’re between 13 and 17, you’ll be given the option to let your parent or guardian confirm your age. You’ll tell TikTok their email address, and TikTok will send your parent or guardian an email asking them (a) to confirm your date of birth, and (b) to verify their own age by proving that they own a valid credit card. This option doesn’t always seem to be offered, and in the one case we could find, it’s possible that TikTok never followed up with the parent. So it’s unclear how or if TikTok verifies that the adult whose email you provide is your parent or guardian. If you want to use credit card verification but you’re not old enough to have a credit card, and you’re ok with letting an adult know you use TikTok, this option may be reasonable to try.

Photo with a Random Adult?

Bizarrely, if you’re between 13 and 17, TikTok claims to offer the option to take a photo with literally any random adult to confirm your age. Its help page says that any trusted adult over 25 can be chosen, as long as they’re holding a piece of paper with the code on it that TikTok provides. It also mentions that a third-party provider is used here, but doesn’t say which one. We haven’t found any evidence of this verification method being offered. Please do let us know if you’ve used this method to verify your age on TikTok!

Photo ID and Face Comparison

If you aren’t offered or have failed the other options, you’ll have to verify your age by submitting a copy of your ID and matching photo of your face. You’ll be sent to Incode, a third-party verification service. In a disappointing failure to meet the industry standard, Incode itself doesn’t automatically delete the data you give it once the process is complete, but TikTok does claim to “start the process to delete the information you submitted,” which should include telling Incode to delete your data once the process is done. If you want to be sure, you can ask Incode to delete that data yourself. Incode tells TikTok that you met the age threshold without providing your exact date of birth, but then TikTok wants to know the exact date anyway, so it’ll ask for your date of birth even after your age has been verified.

TikTok itself might not see your actual ID depending on its implementation choices, but Incode will. Your ID contains sensitive information such as your full legal name and home address. Using this option not only runs the (hopefully small, but never nonexistent) risk of that data getting accidentally leaked through errors or hacking. If you don’t want TikTok or Incode to know your name, what you look like, and where you live—or if you don’t want to rely on both TikTok and Incode to keep to their deletion promises—then this option may not be right for you.

Everywhere Else

We’ve covered the major providers here, but age verification is unfortunately being required of many other services that you might use as well. While the providers and processes may vary, the same general principles will apply. If you’re trying to choose what information to provide to continue to use a service, consider the “follow the data” questions mentioned above, and try to find out how the company will store and process the data you give it. The less sensitive information, the fewer people have access to it, and the more quickly it will be deleted, the better. You may even come to recognize popular names in the age verification industry: Spotify and OnlyFans use Yoti (just like Meta and Tiktok), Quora and Discord use k-ID, and so on. 

Unfortunately, it should be clear by now that none of the age verification options are perfect in terms of protecting information, providing access to everyone, and safely handling sensitive data. That’s just one of the reasons that EFF is against age-gating mandates, and is working to stop and overturn them across the United States and around the world.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino has been sent back to the border after making himself the Nazi scum face of the Trump administration’s brutal efforts to purge this country of as many non-white people as possible.

Bovino made it clear what team he really wanted to play for before Trump was even sworn in for the second time. After Trump’s election win (but before Trump actually took office), Bovino self-authorized an expansive anti-migrant operation without bothering to check in with DHS leadership to make sure he was cleared to do this.

Trump is always capable of recognizing opportunistic thugs whose dark hearts are as corroded as his own. Bovino was swiftly elevated to an unappointed position as the nominal head of Trump’s many inland invasions of cities run by the opposing political party. Bovino embraced the role of shitheel thug, leading directly to court orders that attempted to restrain his brutal actions. Bovino appeared willing to ignore most court orders he was hit with, increasing his brutality and his public contempt of not only court orders, but the judges themselves, who he insulted during public statements to journalists.

After two murders in three weeks, the Trump administration started to realize it has lost the “hearts and minds” battle with most US citizens and residents. While ICE operations continue to be indistinguishable from kidnapping and the DHS is still ambushing migrants attempting to follow the terms of their supervised release agreements, Bovino has become the now-unacceptable personification of the administration’s bigoted war on migrants.

Bovino has been sent back down to the minors, so to speak. He’s been removed from high-profile surges in Chicago and Minneapolis and remanded to his former patrol area, which is much, much closer to the US border where there’s nearly no immigration activity happening thanks to the ongoing war on migrants.

Insubordination is fine as long as it doesn’t create friction Trump may have to eventually deal with. Bovino, however, is just as incapable of picking his battles as the president himself. Too many cocks spoil the broth, as the saying (almost) goes.

Thanks to a leaked email shared with NBC, we now know more about Bovino’s resistance to anyone anywhere who attempted to tell him what to do.

Bovino wanted to conduct large-scale immigration sweeps during an operation in Chicago in September, but the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, told him the focus was to conduct “targeted operations,” arresting only of people known to federal agents ahead of time for their violations of immigration law or other laws, according to the correspondence.

“Mr. Lyons seemed intent that CBP conduct targeted operations for at least two weeks before transitioning to full scale immigration enforcement,” Bovino wrote in an email to Department of Homeland Security leaders in Washington, referring to Customs and Border Protection, which oversees Border Patrol agents. “I declined his suggestion. We ended the conversation shortly thereafter.”

Keep in mind that Bovino is a Border Patrol commander who was working nowhere near the border. Also, keep in mind that ICE is the lead agency in any immigration enforcement efforts because… well, it’s in the name: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is Bovino not only giving the finger to the chain of command, but also insisting his agency (along with the CBP) take the lead in Midwestern apprehensions, despite neither agency having much in the terms of training for inland operations.

Speaking of chain of command, the commander of an agency that’s a component of the DHS made it clear he believed he didn’t have to answer to the DHS either, as Leigh Kimmons reports in their article for the Daily Beast:

The email also revealed a rather bizarre chain of command, with Bovino saying he reported to Noem’s aide, Corey Lewandowski, and appearing to defy Lyons’ authority. “Mr. Lyons said he was in charge, and I corrected him saying I report to Corey Lewandowski,” Bovino reportedly said of the unpaid special government employee.

This email makes one thing perfectly clear: Bovino appeared to believe he answered to no one. And he would only “report” to people he felt wouldn’t push back against his confrontational, rights-violating efforts. This probably would have never been a problem, but Bovino consistently crossed lines that even Trump’s high-level sycophantic bigots were hesitant to cross.

And now he’s the one who is experiencing the “find out” part that usually follows the “fucking around.” He’s been sidelined, perhaps permanently. Acting ICE director Todd Lyons is the new face of Trump’s inland invasions. Kristi Noem herself seems to be on the list of potential cuts, should the administration continue its on-again, off-again pivot to a less outwardly racist agenda when it comes to immigration enforcement.

But I’m not here to damn with faint praise or even damn with faint damnation. I hope Bovino’s last years as a Border Patrol commander are as terrible as his haircut. I hope Todd Lyons veers so far to the middle that Trump shitcans him. I hope Noem is on the path to private sector employment, tainted with the scarlet “T” that means any future version of MAGA won’t even bother to check in with her now that the only people she can make miserable are her own children. Adios, Bovino. Sleep badly.

In the last few years, the Supreme Court has been paying a lot more attention to the internet than it ever has before, and the cases keep on coming. This is already having a big impact on how the internet functions, and it doesn’t look likely to stop any time soon. Given all that, this week our own Cathy Gellis joins the podcast for a discussion all about the past, present, and future of SCOTUS and the internet.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Instantly become a color expert with the Nix Mini 3 Color Sensor. This portable device puts all paint fan decks in your pocket, offering access to over 200,000 brand-name paint colors and essential color codes like RGB, HEX, and CMYK. Perfect for designers, contractors, and homeowners. The Mini 3 features Bluetooth connectivity, Debris and splash resistance, and free access to the Nix Toolkit app for precise and convenient color matching. This newest version improves accuracy with 3x enhanced resolution over the Mini 2 and significant improvements to battery life and Bluetooth connectivity. The Nix Mini 3 ensures reliable color management for any project. Additionally, it matches premium libraries like Pantone, RAL, and NCS with monthly or annual subscription options. It’s on sale for $69.97 for a limited time.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

We live in a stupidly polarizing world where nuance is apparently not allowed. Everyone wants you to be for or against something—and nowhere is this more exhausting than with AI. There are those who insist that it’s all bad and there is nothing of value in it. And there are those who think it’s all powerful, the greatest thing ever, and will replace basically every job with AI bots who can work better and faster.

I think both are wrong, but it’s important to understand why.

So let me lay out how I actually think about it. When it’s used properly, as a tool to assist a human being in accomplishing a goal, it can be incredibly powerful and valuable. When it’s used in a way where the human’s input and thinking are replaced, it tends to do very badly.

And that difference matters.

I think back to a post from Cory Doctorow a couple months ago where he tried to make the same point using a different kind of analogy: centaurs and reverse-centaurs.

Start with what a reverse centaur is. In automation theory, a “centaur” is a person who is assisted by a machine. You’re a human head being carried around on a tireless robot body. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete.

And obviously, a reverse centaur is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine.

Like an Amazon delivery driver, who sits in a cabin surrounded by AI cameras, that monitor the driver’s eyes and take points off if the driver looks in a proscribed direction, and monitors the driver’s mouth because singing isn’t allowed on the job, and rats the driver out to the boss if they don’t make quota.

The driver is in that van because the van can’t drive itself and can’t get a parcel from the curb to your porch. The driver is a peripheral for a van, and the van drives the driver, at superhuman speed, demanding superhuman endurance. But the driver is human, so the van doesn’t just use the driver. The van uses the driver up.

Obviously, it’s nice to be a centaur, and it’s horrible to be a reverse centaur.

As Doctorow notes in his piece, some of the companies embracing AI tech are doing so with the goal of building reverse-centaurs. Those are the ones that people are, quite understandably, uncomfortable with and should be mocked. But the reality is, also, it seems quite likely those efforts will fail.

And they’ll fail not just because they’re dehumanizing—though they are—but because the output is garbage. Hallucinations, slop, confidently wrong answers: that’s what happens when nobody with actual knowledge is checking whether any of it makes sense. When AI works well, it’s because a human is providing the knowledge and the creativity.

The reverse-centaur doesn’t just burn out the human. It produces worse work, because it assumes that the AI can provide the knowledge or the creativity. It can’t. That requires a human. The power of AI tools is in enabling a human to take their own knowledge, and their own creativity and enhance it, to do more with it, based on what the person actually wants.

To me it’s a simple question of “what’s the tool?” Is it the AI, used thoughtfully by a human to do more than they otherwise could have? If so, that’s a good and potentially positive use of AI. It’s the centaur in Doctorow’s analogy.

Or is the human the tool? Is it a “reverse centaur”? I think nearly all of those are destined to fail.

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. That’s just empirically false. Plenty of people—including myself—get tremendous use out of the technology. I am using it regularly in all different ways. It’s been two years since I wrote about how I used it to help as a first pass editor.

The tech has gotten dramatically better since then, but the key insight to me is what it takes to make it useful: context is everything. My AI editor doesn’t just get my draft writeup and give me advice based on that and its training—it also has a sampling of the best Techdirt articles, a custom style guide with details about how I write, a deeply customized system prompt (the part of AI tools that are often hidden from public view) and a deeply customized starting prompt. It also often includes the source articles I’m writing about. With all that context, it’s an astoundingly good editor. Sometimes it points out weak arguments I missed entirely. Sometimes it has nothing to say.

(As an aside, in this article, it suggested I went on way too long explaining all the context I give it to give me better suggestions, and thus I shortened it to just the paragraph above this one).

It’s not always right. Its suggestions are not always good. But that’s okay, because I’m not outsourcing my brain to it. It’s a tool. And way more often than not, it pushes me to be a better writer.

This is why I get frustrated every time people point out a single AI fail or hallucination without context.

The problem only comes in when people outsource their brains. When they become reverse centaurs. When they are the tool instead of using AI as the tool. That’s when hallucinations or bad info matter.

But if the human is in control, if they’re using their own brain, if they’re evaluating what the tool is suggesting or recommending and making the final decision, then it can be used wisely and can be incredibly helpful.

And this gets at something most people miss entirely: when they think about AI, they’re still imagining a chatbot. They think every AI tool is ChatGPT. A thing you talk to. A thing that generates text or images for you to copy-paste somewhere else.

That’s increasingly not where the action is. The more powerful shift is toward agentic AI—tools that don’t just generate content, but actually do things. They write code and run it. They browse the web and synthesize what they find. They execute multi-step tasks with minimal hand-holding. This is a fundamentally different model than “ask a chatbot a question and get an answer.”

I’ve been using Claude Code recently, and this distinction matters. It’s an agent that can plan, execute, and iterate on actual software projects, rather than just a tool talking to me about what to do. But, again, that doesn’t mean I just outsource my brain to it.

I often put Claude Code into plan mode, where it tries to work out a plan, but then I spend quite a lot of time exploring why it was making certain decisions, and asking it to explore the pros and cons of those decisions, and even to provide me with alternative sources to understand the trade-offs of some of the decisions it is recommending. That back and forth has been both educational for me, but also makes me have a better understanding and be comfortable with the eventual projects I use Claude Code to build.

I am using it as a tool, and part of that is making sure I understand what it’s doing. I am not outsourcing my brain to it. I am using it, carefully, to do things that I simply could not have done before.

And that’s powerful and valuable.

Yes, there are so many bad uses of AI tools. And yes, there is a concerted, industrial-scale effort, to convince the public they need to use AI in ways that they probably shouldn’t, or in ways that is actively harmful. And yes, there are real questions about what it costs to train and run the foundation models. And we should discuss those and call those out for what they are.

But the people who insist the tools are useless and provide nothing of value, that’s just wrong. Similarly, anyone who thinks the tech is going to go away are entirely wrong. There likely is a funding bubble. And some companies will absolutely suffer as it deflates. But it won’t make the tech go away.

When used properly, it’s just too useful.

As Cory notes in his centaur piece, AI can absolutely help you do your job, but the industry’s entire focus is on convincing people it can replace your job. That’s the con. The tech doesn’t replace people. But it can make them dramatically more capable—if they stay in the driver’s seat.

The key to understanding the good and the bad of the AI hype is understanding that distinction. Cory explains this in reference to AI coding:

Think of AI software generation: there are plenty of coders who love using AI, and almost without exception, they are senior, experienced coders, who get to decide how they will use these tools. For example, you might ask the AI to generate a set of CSS files to faithfully render a web-page across multiple versions of multiple browsers. This is a notoriously fiddly thing to do, and it’s pretty easy to verify if the code works – just eyeball it in a bunch of browsers. Or maybe the coder has a single data file they need to import and they don’t want to write a whole utility to convert it.

Tasks like these can genuinely make coders more efficient and give them more time to do the fun part of coding, namely, solving really gnarly, abstract puzzles. But when you listen to business leaders talk about their AI plans for coders, it’s clear they’re not looking to make some centaurs.

They want to fire a lot of tech workers – they’ve fired 500,000 over the past three years – and make the rest pick up their work with coding, which is only possible if you let the AI do all the gnarly, creative problem solving, and then you do the most boring, soul-crushing part of the job: reviewing the AIs’ code.

Criticize the hype. Mock the replace-your-workforce promises. Call out the slop factories and the gray goo doomsaying. But don’t mistake the bad uses for the technology itself. When a human stays in control—thinking, evaluating, deciding—it’s a genuinely powerful tool. The important question is just whether you’re using it, or it’s using you.

Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales from Texas went on Face the Nation on Sunday and said a lot of silly things, doing his best as a loyal Trump foot soldier to defend the indefensible, to make sense of the nonsensical, and to lie about all the rest.

However, I wanted to focus on one bit of the clip that I’ve watched over a dozen times, and still can’t figure out what Rep. Gonzales meant. And I’m writing this in hopes that some DC or Texas reporter asks Gonzales to explain. Here’s the clip:

And here’s the transcript from CBS. I’m including a bit more than is in the clip just to get the full context of what he’s saying:

MARGARET BRENNAN: You have this facility, though, in your district, Dilley, and that is for family detentions. That’s where little five-year-old Liam Ramos from Minnesota was held before a judge, that’s the picture of him there, ordered him released. He was ordered released because his family has a pending asylum claim, a legal process. He had entered with U.S. government permission through a process that the Biden administration had deemed legal. The current administration does not. The CBPOne app. Liam’s father gave an interview to Telemundo and you read the transcript, he’s talking about this five-year-old. He’s not okay. He’s waking up at night crying. He’s worried he’s going to be taken again. It’s psychological trauma, according to the father. And the administration is still trying to deport him. Do you understand why they are so focused on this five-year-old and his dad if they did come in through the front door with U.S. government permission? 

REP. GONZALES: Well, the front door was via an app that Biden knew exactly what he was doing, and he created this huge mess, and now President Trump is there to clean up.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –but he came in the front door, he wasn’t–

REP. GONZALES: –through an app–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –across the border–

REP. GONZALES: –through an app that wasn’t vetted. And bottom line is, he’s likely- they’re not going to qualify for asylum. So what do you do with all the people that go through the process and do not qualify for asylum? You deport them. I understand the five-year-old and it, you know, it breaks my heart. I have a five year old at home. I also think, what about that five-year-old U.S. citizen–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –You feel comfortable defending that? 

REP. GONZALES: I feel comfortable- we have to have a nation of laws. If we don’t have a nation of laws–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –They were following the- the law that is- that is that’s the rub, is that a new administration deemed the last administration’s regulation not to be legal.

Again, there’s a lot of nonsense in there, including Gonzales trying to pretend that Liam Ramos and his father had not entered the right way and following the laws of the US for those seeking to come here just because it was “through an app.” That app was the legal process. They followed the law. They did it the right way. To magically make that out to be violating the law because the next administration no longer wants to support that path doesn’t change the underlying fact that they were doing things the legal way.

But, again, let’s leave that aside. I simply want to focus in on the question of what the fuck Gonzales meant when he said:

I understand the five-year-old and it, you know, it breaks my heart. I have a five year old at home. I also think, what about that five-year-old U.S. citizen–

What about them? Under what scenario, process, or idea is that hypothetical five-year-old US citizen harmed? I’ve been unable to think or a single possible scenario in which the US citizen five-year-old could be harmed by allowing Liam Ramos to go through the asylum process.

Perhaps Rep. Gonzales can enlighten us by completing his thought and explaining.

Seriously: what is the scenario here? Is pre-kindergarten a zero-sum game now? Does Liam Ramos’s presence in a classroom somehow harm the US citizen in the next seat?

Brennan cut him off before he could finish the thought, and nobody followed up. So we don’t know. But I’d really like someone in the DC or Texas press corps to ask him to complete that sentence. Because I can think of one very obvious way that five-year-old US citizens are being harmed right now—and it’s not by Liam Ramos.

It’s by watching their government kidnap their classmates.

Nicholas Grossman talked about how his own child is distraught because some of his classmates can no longer come to school for fear their parents may be kidnapped by ICE:

Indeed, the NY Times went and actually spoke with Liam Ramos’ classmates, and they seem legitimately distraught that government agents kidnapped their friend and sent him halfway across the country to a dangerous concentration camp. The video on that page is absolutely heartbreaking. I don’t see how anyone with a soul could possibly support or justify what is being done to Ramos. And to claim it’s in the name of his US citizen classmates is even more obnoxious. Just a couple of the quotes from five year olds:

“You are scaring schools, people, and the world. You should be kind, helpful, and caring like normal police. Not dangerous, scary, and stealing people. I think you should make friends with the world.”

“You, right now, you’re making people really sad because you’re just taking them away without them doing anything.”

So, please, Rep. Gonazales, tell us what you were thinking. What about those five-year-olds? What about kidnapping their classmate makes them better off? What about any of this makes sense? They’re not criminals. They followed the official legal process. They came in through “the front door” following the official process of the government at the time.

At no point have they done anything wrong.

So please, Rep. Gonzales: finish the thought. What about that five-year-old US citizen?

Because those five-year-old US citizens have already given their answer. They’re not being harmed by Liam Ramos. They’re being harmed by a government that just taught them their friends can disappear without warning.

That’s “what about” them.

I don’t understand sycophancy. Never have. I don’t know what it gets you in the long run other than a reputation for subservience. That’s worth nearly nothing in the open market. The only people who will hire you are people most people would never want to work for.

And yet, that is pretty much the entirety of the GOP under Trump: a massive collection of doormats the current president won’t even remember stepping on moments later. Sucking up to a goldfish brain like Trump makes you a fool, rather than the savvy pol you imagine yourself to be.

Welcome to the dom side of the sub/dom equation, Senator Marsha Blackburn. While she’s most famous here for trying to turn the internet into whatever the current iteration of the GOP wishes it to be (at least here at Techdirt), she’s stepped out of her comfort zone recently to publicly complain about a Supreme Court justice who attended an awards show where multiple people publicly criticized Trump’s anti-migrant actions.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) called for an investigation Thursday into Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for attending the Grammy Awards, where various artists criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

[…]

“Americans deserve a Supreme Court that is impartial and above political influence,” Blackburn wrote on social platform X. “When a Justice participates in such a highly politicized event, it raises ethical questions. We need an investigation into Justice Jackson’s ability to remain impartial.”

First things fucking last, Justice Jackson was not a presenter, nor was she a “participant” in any of the ICE criticism delivered by Grammy-nominated artists like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Justin Vernon. She was also not involved in any way with the production of the Grammy Awards ceremony, further removing her from anything that might be deemed “impartial.”

But beyond any of that is the fact that Justice Jackson had a perfectly legitimate, non-political reason to be there:

Jackson was nominated in the Best Audio Book, Narration and Storytelling Recording category for her memoir “Lovely One.” 

Jackson didn’t win (she lost to the Dalai Lama which, if you’re going to lose, is probably a loss you’ll never complain about publicly) but she was nominated. That alone gave her a reason to be there. The anti-ICE content may have been personally enjoyable, but she wasn’t there to soak up the stuff being said by others.

Not that it matters to the performative doormats currently employed as GOP politicians. Sen. Blackburn immediately started banging away on her keyboard and decided to take her disgruntled Grammy Awards forum comments to the next level by sending them off to Chief Justice John Roberts:

I write today regarding recent reporting about Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s attendance at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, on Sunday, February 1, and the ethical questions raised by her attendance at such a highly politicized event. For the following
reasons, I urge you to conduct a thorough investigation into Justice Jackson’s attendance at this event and whether her presence at such an event complies with the obligation that a Supreme Court justice “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

While it is by no means unheard of or unusual for a Supreme Court justice to attend a public function, very rarely—if ever—have justices of our nation’s highest Court been present at an event at which attendees have amplified such far-left rhetoric. Many of the attendees wore lapel pins that read “ICE OUT,” an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) adage. One Grammy winner that evening opened his acceptance speech by stating, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ‘ICE out,’” which was received with thunderous applause by the crowd. Another award recipient that evening noted in her acceptance speech that “No one is illegal on stolen land,” going on to say that “we need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting . . . And f*** ICE, that’s all I’m gonna say.” These statements were just two of many polarized, highly charged anti-law enforcement sentiments from that evening. It is important to note that Justice Jackson was present in the audience throughout the event.

Wow. Harsh words from someone who couldn’t be bothered to speak up while Justice Clarence Thomas received millions of dollars’ worth of gifts from right-wing benefactors over the past two decades. She was oddly quiet when it was revealed Justice Thomas’s wife was pushing election conspiracy theories. Truly an unexpected amount of yelling from someone who had nothing to say when Justice Alito’s wife was flying pro-Trump flags at Alito’s home.

Oh. Wait. Blackburn has something to say about both of those things in this letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court:

Unlike these meritless claims against Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, there are serious questions regarding Justice Jackson’s participation in such a brazenly political, anti-law enforcement event and her ability to remain an impartial member of the Supreme Court.

It was a Grammy Awards ceremony, not an anti-ICE protest. That people had negative things to say about ICE is completely expected, given how many people are opposed to how this administration is handling immigration enforcement. Blackburn absolutely knows she’s comparing apples to precision-machined aftermarket car parts. But like everyone else in this despicable political party, she doesn’t care and she knows it’s going to cause at least a small percentage of the converted to pretend to be offended on her behalf.

I assume John Roberts knows this as well. Let’s hope he’ll just roll his eyes and go back to binge-watching the kind of television I assume he enjoys: the no-one-asked-for-this 2023 reboot of Night Court.

FCC boss Brendan Carr is back with yet another fake “investigation” of media outlets he deems insufficiently deferential to radical (and increasingly unpopular) right wing ideology. This time it involves Carr launching a phony non-investigation of ABC’s The View. The crime? They apparently didn’t kiss MAGA Republican ass with enough zeal:

“The Federal Communications Commission is opening an investigation into whether ABC’s “The View” daytime talk show violated equal time rules for interviews with political candidates after an appearance by a Democratic Texas Senate candidate this week, a source told Reuters on Saturday.”

This, to be clear, isn’t a real investigation. Carr’s office is likely the Reuters source. And he previously hinted this was coming. As we mentioned then,  Carr is threatening to leverage the “equal time” rule embedded in Section 315 of the Communications Act to take action against talk shows that don’t provide “equal” time to Republican ideology.

The rule is a dated relic that would be largely impossible for the Trump FCC to actually enforce. Republicans like Carr historically despised the equal time rule — an offshoot of the long-defunct Fairness Doctrine, a problematic effort to ensure media fairness (specifically on broadcast TV) they long complained was unconstitutional. Until they found a “President leader” with no ethical or moral center.

The rule was originally created to apply specifically to political candidate appearances on broadcast television, since back then, a TV appearance on one of the big three networks could make or break and politician attempting to run for office. In the years since, the rule has seen numerous exemptions and, with the evisceration of the regulatory state by the right wing, isn’t seriously enforceable.

That’s not stopping weird Trump zealots like Carr, who is keen to abuse FCC authority he doesn’t really have to harass media companies that don’t adequately bend the knee to kakistocracy. Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat Commissioner, has done a good job with messaging pointing out that Carr is a dangerous, but highly performative, hack:

“Like many other so-called ‘investigations’ before it, the FCC will announce an investigation but never carry one out, reach a conclusion, or take any meaningful action,” she said. “This is government intimidation, not a legitimate investigation.”

As Gomez notes, most of this stuff goes nowhere. On one hand, it’s decorative cack Carr leaks to gullible media outlets to make it appear like he’s doing important things. On the other hand, it’s still designed to stifle journalistic freedom and the First Amendment by warning media companies that they’ll face protracted and costly legal headaches if they refuse to kiss Republican ass.

Keep in mind that ABC and Disney executives have already repeatedly tripped over themselves to curry favor with our embarrassing government, including paying Trump a $15 million bribe to settle a baseless lawsuit they were likely to win. They’re doing this because they like lower taxes, mindless deregulation, and rubber-stamped media consolidation. They couldn’t care less about journalism or viewpoint diversity.

These are cases that not only are winnable, many excellent lawyers would be willing to help fight them. And yet our media giants are still pathetic and feckless. It’s another good lesson about how even if you think kissing up to autocrats is a financial win, it doesn’t pay great returns over the longer haul. There is never a point where you will be deemed dutifully obedient, and akin to Vader’s management of Bespin’s Cloud City, the arrangement can and will always get worse.

Our increasingly broken corporate press struggles (or simply refuses) to communicate that Carr’s goal isn’t equality; it’s the disproportionate coddling and normalization of an extremist U.S. right wing political movement that’s increasingly despised by the actual public.

It was this steady media deterioration at the hands of the right wing and corporate power that opened the door to Trump’s buffoonery in the first place. And, without a serious progressive media reform movement (which needs to include publicly funded media, serious media consolidation limits, ownership diversity rules, and creative new funding models for real journalism), it’s only going to get worse.

The obvious end point, if people of conscience can’t galvanize useful policy reform, will be the sort of state media control we seen in countries like Russia and Hungary. At which point, all of the problems we’re seeing now at the hands of our violent, dim autocrats will only get worse.