I see people say all the time that Framework Ward's story shows that Grant Ward was redeemable. And let me be clear, I do think Ward would have turned out fine if he wasn't groomed by a psycho. A much better argument for that is how Garrett had to constantly belittle Ward's desire to care about him.
But you can't equate the two characters. The Framework was a simulation with conscious entities, but those entities were basically in three different groups.
- People who were scanned neuron by neuron before dying in the real world à la Radcliff.
- People who aren't dead. They're somehow interacting with the framework through a neural interface. Basically, all the team members.
- Characters in the simulation. I'm going to assume that Aida used the framework tech to make these characters completely independent and conscious with their own simulated brains.
Now, there's a philosophical argument about whether the first group are the 'real' them, but they are certainly the closest thing to the real thing.
The second group are definitely their real selves.
But the third group are only loosely based on the real people they're supposed to emulate. Aida didn't scan the neurons of the entire planet. If we assume she did base the original Framework population on real people, the most she probably had to go on was social media and public records.
For Ward, she had Shield reports and possibly the memories of his coworkers to flesh him out, but at the end of the day, Framework Ward is just another NPC who was given a fake backstory. That doesn't mean Framework Ward wasn't a conscious entity. It doesn't mean he wasn't influenced by that backstory.
But think of all the memories a person has in their life that are never recorded or written down. For instance, Ward is the only person who knows what happened the day he killed Christian. He's the only one who heard that confession. While Framework Ward is based on an earlier version of him, it's also missing out on anything more than the broad strokes of what was publically recorded about Ward. It's a fake.