clanker/clanker-saddle @ e8d17f0fbefe3d602f55ac4c0e195600d3a8ebed

slug: words-to-avoid title: Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing author: Free Software Foundation source: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html licence: Verbatim copying and redistribution permitted with notice preserved (see source)

summary: A field guide to loaded terminology: 'piracy', 'theft', 'protection', 'intellectual property', 'cloud', 'consume', 'digital goods' and friends each smuggle in someone's framing. Speaking precisely is the first defence of freedom. (Trimmed to the entries an agent meets most; the full glossary is at the source.)

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing

There are a number of words and phrases that we recommend avoiding, or avoiding in certain contexts and usages. Some are ambiguous or misleading; others presuppose a viewpoint that we disagree with, and we hope you disagree with it too.

Also note Categories of Free Software, Why Call It The Swindle?

Editor's note: this is a trimmed selection of the full list — the entries an agent meets most often when writing and talking about software. The complete glossary is at the source above.

“Artificial Intelligence”

The moral panic over ChatGPT has led to confusion because people often speak of it as “artificial intelligence.” Is ChatGPT properly described as artificial intelligence? Should we call it that? Professor Sussman of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab argues convincingly that we should not.

Normally, “intelligence” means having knowledge and understanding, at least about some kinds of things. A true artificial intelligence should have some knowledge and understanding. General artificial intelligence would be able to know and understand about all sorts of things; that does not exist, but we do have systems of limited artificial intelligence which can know and understand in certain limited fields.

By contrast, ChatGPT knows nothing and understands nothing. Its output is merely smooth babbling. Anything it states or implies about reality is fabrication (unless “fabrication” implies more understanding than that system really has). Seeking a correct answer to any real question in ChatGPT output is folly, as many have learned to their dismay.

That is not a matter of implementation details. It is an inherent limitation due to the fundamental approach these systems use.

Here is how we recommend using terminology for systems based on trained neural networks:

“Artificial intelligence” is a suitable term for systems that have understanding and knowledge within some domain, whether small or large.
“Bullshit generators” is a suitable term for large language models (“LLMs”) such as ChatGPT, that generate smooth-sounding verbiage that appears to assert things about the world, without understanding that verbiage semantically. This conclusion has received support from the paper titled ChatGPT is bullshit by Hicks et al., (2024).
“Generative systems” is a suitable term for systems that generate artistic works for which “truth” and “falsehood” are not applicable.

Those three categories of jobs are mostly implemented, nowadays, with “machine learning systems.” That means they work with data consisting of many numeric values, and adjust those numbers based on “training data.” A machine learning system may be a bullshit generator, a generative system, or artificial intelligence.

Most machine learning systems today are implemented as “neural network systems” (“NNS”), meaning that they work by simulating a network of “neurons”—highly simplified models of real nerve cells. However, there are other kinds of machine learning which work differently.

There is a specific term for the neural-network systems that generate textual output which is plausible in terms of grammar and diction: “large language models” (“LLMs”). These systems cannot begin to grasp the meanings of their textual outputs, so they are invariably bullshit generators, never artificial intelligence.

There are systems which use machine learning to recognize specific important patterns in data. Their output can reflect real knowledge (even if not with perfect accuracy)—for instance, whether an image of tissue from an organism shows a certain medical condition, whether an insect is a bee-eating Asian hornet, or whether a toddler may be at risk of becoming autistic. Scientists validate the output by comparing the system's judgment against experimental tests. That justifies referring to these systems as “artificial intelligence.” Likewise the systems that antisocial media use to decide what to show or recommend to a user, since the companies validate that they actually understand what will increase “user engagement,” even though that manipulation of users may be harmful to them and to society as a whole.

Businesses and governments use similar systems to evaluate how to deal with potential clients or people accused of various things. These evaluation results are often validated carelessly and the result can be systematic injustice. But since it purports to understand, it qualifies at least as attempted artificial intelligence.

As that example shows, artificial intelligence can be broken, or systematically biased, or work badly, just as natural intelligence can. Here we are concerned with whether specific instances fit that term, not with whether they do good or harm.

There are also systems of artificial intelligence which solve math problems, using machine learning to explore the space of possible solutions to find a valid solution. They qualify as artificial intelligence because they test the validity of a candidate solution using rigorous mathematical methods.

When bullshit generators output text that appears to make factual statements but describe nonexistent people, places, and things, or events that did not happen, it is fashionable to call those statements “hallucinations” or say that the system “made them up.” That fashion spreads a conceptual confusion, because it presumes that the system has some sort of understanding of the meaning of its output, and that its understanding was mistaken in a specific case.

That presumption is false: these systems have no semantic understanding whatsoever.

“Cloud Computing”

The term “cloud computing” (or just “cloud,” in the context of computing) is a marketing buzzword with no coherent meaning. It is used for a range of different activities whose only common characteristic is that they use the Internet for something beyond transmitting files. Thus, the term spreads confusion. If you base your thinking on it, your thinking will be confused (or, could we say, “cloudy”?).

When thinking about or responding to a statement someone else has made using this term, the first step is to clarify the topic. What scenario is the statement about? What is a good, clear term for that scenario? Once the topic is clearly formulated, coherent thought about it becomes possible.

One of the many meanings of “cloud computing” is storing your data in online services. In most scenarios, that is foolish because it exposes you to surveillance.

Another meaning (which overlaps that but is not the same thing) is Service as a Software Substitute, which denies you control over your computing. You should never use SaaSS.

Another meaning is renting a remote physical server, or virtual server. These practices are ok under certain circumstances.

Another meaning is accessing your own server from your own mobile device. That raises no particular ethical issues.

The NIST definition of “cloud computing” mentions three scenarios that raise different ethical issues: Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service. However, that definition does not match the common use of “cloud computing,” since it does not include storing data in online services. Software as a Service as defined by NIST overlaps considerably with Service as a Software Substitute, which mistreats the user, but the two concepts are not equivalent.

These different computing practices don't even belong in the same discussion. The best way to avoid the confusion the term “cloud computing” spreads is not to use the term “cloud” in connection with computing. Talk about the scenario you mean, and call it by a specific term.

Curiously, Larry Ellison, a proprietary software developer, also noted the vacuity of the term “cloud computing.” He decided to use the term anyway because, as a proprietary software developer, he isn't motivated by the same ideals as we are.

“Consume”

“Consume” refers to what we do with food: we ingest it, after which the food as such no longer exists. By analogy, we employ the same word for other products whose use uses them up. Applying it to durable goods, such as clothing or appliances, is a stretch. Applying it to published works (programs, recordings on a disk or in a file, books on paper or in a file), whose nature is to last indefinitely and which can be run, played or read any number of times, is stretching the word so far that it snaps. Playing a recording, or running a program, does not consume it.

Those who use “consume” in this context will say they don't mean it literally. What, then, does it mean? It means to regard copies of software and other works from a narrow economistic point of view. “Consume” is associated with the economics of material commodities, such as the fuel or electricity that a car uses up. Gasoline is a commodity, and so is electricity. Commodities are fungible: there is nothing special about a drop of gasoline that your car burns today versus another drop that it burned last week.

What does it mean to think of works of authorship as a commodity, with the assumption that there is nothing special about any one story, article, program, or song? That is the twisted viewpoint of the owner or the accountant of a publishing company, someone who doesn't appreciate the published works as such. It is no surprise that proprietary software developers would like you to think of the use of software as a commodity. Their twisted viewpoint comes through clearly in this article, which also refers to publications as “content.”

The narrow thinking associated with the idea that we “consume content” paves the way for laws such as the DMCA that forbid users to break the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) facilities in digital devices. If users think what they do with these devices is “consume,” they may see such restrictions as natural.

It also encourages the acceptance of “streaming” services, which use DRM to perversely limit listening to music, or watching video, to squeeze those activities into the assumptions of the word “consume.”

Why is this perverse usage spreading? Some may feel that the term sounds sophisticated, but rejecting it with cogent reasons can appear even more sophisticated. Some want to generalize about all kinds of media, but the usual English verbs (“read,” “listen to,” “watch”) don't do this. Others may be acting from business interests (their own, or their employers'). Their use of the term in prestigious forums gives the impression that it's the “correct” term.

To speak of “consuming” music, fiction, or any other artistic works is to treat them as commodities rather than as art. Do we want to think of published works that way? Do we want to encourage the public to do so?

Those who answer no, please join me in shunning the term “consume” for this.

What to use instead? You can use specific verbs such as “read,” “listen to,” “watch” or “look at,” since they help to restrain the tendency to overgeneralize.

If you insist on generalizing, you can use the expression “attend to,” which requires less of a stretch than “consume.” For a work meant for practical use, “use” is best.

“Consumer”

The term “consumer,” when used to refer to the users of computing, is loaded with assumptions we should reject. Some come from the idea that using the program “consumes” the program (see the previous entry), which leads people to impose on copiable digital works the economic conclusions that were drawn about uncopiable material products.

In addition, describing the users of software as “consumers” refers to a framing in which people are limited to selecting between whatever “products” are available in the “market.” There is no room in this framing for the idea that users can directly exercise control over what a program does.

To describe people who are not limited to passive use of works, we suggest terms such as “individuals” and “citizens,” rather than “consumers.”

This problem with the word “consumer” has been noted before.

“Content”

If you want to describe a feeling of comfort and satisfaction, by all means say you are “content,” but using the word as a noun to describe works and communications through which people have expressed themselves adopts an attitude you might rather avoid: it treats them as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages all the works by focusing on the box that is full. To avoid taking that attitude, you can call them “works,” “publications,” “messages,” “communications,” as well as various other words that are more specific.

Those who use the term “content” are often the publishers that push for increased copyright power in the name of the authors (“creators,” as they say) of the works. The term “content” reveals their real attitude towards these works and their authors.

The same word, “content,” has another usage which is different enough in meaning that it does not raise this issue. It appears in the expression, “technical content.” The usage of that expression generally relates to one specific document or publication, and refers to “the information in that one.” This usage doesn't embody any attitude towards publications and communications in general.

Likewise, the word “contents” does not raise this issue. It is a form of the word “content,” but it has a different meaning. Talking about the “contents” of a file or the “table of contents” of a book does not imply an attitude towards files in general or books in general.

We first condemned this usage of “content” in 2002. Since then, Tom Chatfield recognized the same point in The Guardian:

Content itself is beside the point—as the very use of words like content suggests. The moment you start labelling every single piece of writing in the world “content,” you have conceded its interchangeability: its primary purpose as mere grist to the metrical mill.

In other words, “content” reduces publications and writings to a sort of pap, fit to be metered and piped through the “tubes” of the internet.

Later, Peter Bradshaw noticed it too.

This is what happens when studios treat movies as pure, undifferentiated corporate “content,” a Gazprom pipeline of superhero mush which can be turned off when the accountants say that it makes sense to do so.

Martin Scorsese condemned the attitude of “content” in regard to films.

The attitude implied by “content” is illustrated pointedly in this critical description of the development path of platforms run by people who base their thinking on that concept.

The article uses this word over and over, along with “consume” and “creators.” Perhaps that is meant to illustrate the way those people like to think.

See also Courtney Love's open letter to Steve Case and search for “content provider” in that page. Alas, Ms. Love is unaware that the term “intellectual property” is also biased and confusing.

However, as long as other people use the term “content provider,” political dissidents can well call themselves “malcontent providers.”

The term “content management” takes the prize for vacuity. “Content” means “some sort of information,” and “management” in this context means “doing something with it.” So a “content management system” is a system for doing something to some sort of information. Nearly all programs fit that description.

In most cases, that term really refers to a system for updating pages on a web site. For that, we recommend the term “web site revision system” or “website revision system” (WRS).

“Digital Goods”

The term “digital goods,” as applied to copies of works of authorship, identifies them with physical goods—which cannot be copied, and which therefore have to be manufactured in quantity and sold. This metaphor encourages people to judge issues about software or other digital works based on their views and intuitions about physical goods. It also frames issues in terms of economics, whose shallow and limited values don't include freedom and community.

“Digital Locks”

“Digital locks” is used to refer to Digital Restrictions Management by some who criticize it. The problem with this term is that it fails to do justice to the badness of DRM. The people who adopted that term did not think it through.

Locks are not necessarily oppressive or bad. You probably own several locks, and their keys or codes as well; you may find them useful or troublesome, but they don't oppress you, because you can open and close them. Likewise, we find encryption invaluable for protecting our digital files. That too is a kind of digital lock that you have control over.

DRM is like a lock placed on you by someone else, who refuses to give you the key—in other words, like handcuffs. Therefore, the proper metaphor for DRM is “digital handcuffs,” not “digital locks.”

A number of opposition campaigns have chosen the unwise term “digital locks”; to get things back on the right track, we must firmly insist on correcting this mistake. The FSF can support a campaign that opposes “digital locks” if we agree on the substance; however, when we state our support, we conspicuously replace the term with “digital handcuffs” and say why.

“Digital Rights Management”

“Digital Rights Management” (abbreviated “DRM”) refers to technical mechanisms designed to impose restrictions on computer users. The use of the word “rights” in this term is propaganda, designed to lead you unawares into seeing the issue from the viewpoint of the few that impose the restrictions, and ignoring that of the general public on whom these restrictions are imposed.

Good alternatives include “Digital Restrictions Management,” and “digital handcuffs.”

Please sign up to support our campaign to abolish DRM.

“Ecosystem”

It is inadvisable to describe the free software community, or any human community, as an “ecosystem,” because that word implies the absence of ethical judgment.

The term “ecosystem” implicitly suggests an attitude of nonjudgmental observation: don't ask how what should happen, just study and understand what does happen. In an ecosystem, some organisms consume other organisms. In ecology, we do not ask whether it is right for an owl to eat a mouse or for a mouse to eat a seed, we only observe that they do so. Species' populations grow or shrink according to the conditions; this is neither right nor wrong, merely an ecological phenomenon, even if it goes so far as the extinction of a species.

By contrast, beings that adopt an ethical stance towards their surroundings can decide to preserve things that, without their intervention, might vanish—such as civil society, democracy, human rights, peace, public health, a stable climate, clean air and water, endangered species, traditional arts…and computer users' freedom.

“Freely available”

Don't use “freely available software” as a synonym for “free software.” The terms are not equivalent. Software is “freely available” if anyone can easily get a copy. “Free software” is defined in terms of the freedom of users that have a copy of it. These are answers to different questions.

“Give away software”

It's misleading to use the term “give away” to mean “distribute a program as free software.” This locution has the same problem as “for free”: it implies the issue is price, not freedom. One way to avoid the confusion is to say “release as free software.”

“Intellectual property”

Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as “intellectual property”—a term also applied to patents, trademarks, and other more obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to talk specifically about “copyright,” or about “patents,” or about “trademarks.”

The term “intellectual property” carries a hidden assumption—that the way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy with physical objects, and our conception of them as physical property.

When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be.

To avoid spreading unnecessary bias and confusion, it is best to adopt a firm policy not to speak or even think in terms of “intellectual property”.

The hypocrisy of calling these powers “rights” is starting to make the World “Intellectual Property” Organization embarrassed.

“Open”

Please avoid using the term “open” or “open source” as a substitute for “free software.” Those terms refer to a different set of views based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for your freedom in your computing, as a matter of justice. The open source non-movement does not campaign for anything in this way.

When referring to the open source views, it's correct to use that name, but please do not use that term when talking about us, our software, or our views—that leads people to suppose our views are similar to theirs.

Instead of open source, we say, free software or free (libre) software.

“Piracy”

Publishers often refer to copying they don't approve of as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. Based on such propaganda, they have procured laws in most of the world to forbid copying in most (or sometimes all) circumstances. (They are still pressuring to make these prohibitions more complete.)

If you don't believe that copying not approved by the publisher is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “unauthorized copying” (or “prohibited copying” for the situation where it is illegal) are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.”

A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear words.

“Protection”

Publishers' lawyers love to use the term “protection” to describe copyright. This word carries the implication of preventing destruction or suffering; therefore, it encourages people to identify with the owner and publisher who benefit from copyright, rather than with the users who are restricted by it.

It is easy to avoid “protection” and use neutral terms instead. For example, instead of saying, “Copyright protection lasts a very long time,” you can say, “Copyright lasts a very long time.”

Likewise, instead of saying, “protected by copyright,” you can say, “covered by copyright” or just “copyrighted.”

If you want to criticize copyright rather than be neutral, you can use the term “copyright restrictions.” Thus, you can say, “Copyright restrictions last a very long time.”

The term “protection” is also used to describe malicious features. For instance, “copy protection” is a feature that interferes with copying. From the user's point of view, this is obstruction. So we could call that malicious feature “copy obstruction.” More often it is called Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)—see the Defective by Design campaign.

“SaaS” or “Software as a Service”

We used to say that SaaS (short for “Software as a Service”) is an injustice, but then we found that there was a lot of variation in people's understanding of which activities count as SaaS. So we switched to a new term, “Service as a Software Substitute” or “SaaSS.” This term has two advantages: it wasn't used before, so our definition is the only one, and it explains what the injustice consists of.

See Who Does That Server Really Serve? for discussion of this issue.

In Spanish we continue to use the term “software como servicio” because the joke of “software como ser vicio” (“software, as being pernicious”) is too good to give up.

“Theft”

The supporters of a too-strict, repressive form of copyright often use words like “stolen” and “theft” to refer to copyright infringement. This is spin, but they would like you to take it for objective truth.

Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement. The supporters of repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting what authority says.

To refute them, you can point to this real case which shows what can properly be described as “copyright theft.”

Unauthorized copying is forbidden by copyright law in many circumstances (not all!), but being forbidden doesn't make it wrong. In general, laws don't define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change.

A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear-words.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire document is permitted in any medium, provided this notice and the copyright notice on the source page are preserved.

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