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Very Important Words the Tech Industry Ruined:
- Friend
- Like
- Engagement
- Smart
- Connect
- Contact
- Intelligence
- Search
- Insights
- Data
- Chat
- Mention
- Reaction
- Stories
- Tweet
- Viral
EDIT: Excellent updates, thanks all! Adding:
- Social
- Community
- Ethical
- Authentic
- Reel
- Generative
- Content
- Experience
- Sync
- Companion
- Reach
- Learn
- Value
- Privacy
- Integrate
- Cloud
- Meta
- Alphabet
Let's reclaim these words and the humanistic ideas and values they actually express!
@cyberlyra I’d like to offer the word “community” for consideration of inclusion in this list.
@cyberlyra Anthropic are trying their hardest to ruin Ethical.
@cyberlyra Authentic
@cyberlyra and they also ruined the 
emoji by associating it with AI slop.
@jdlbt @cyberlyra this so much! I think about slop or false advertisements every time I see it.
@cyberlyra not tech as such but "trump" has also been ruined as a verb.
@cyberlyra
- crypto
- creator
- attention
@cyberlyra Each one is important enough, but I have to say going from Tweet to X defines the future, like all other changed words it stands for representing all :)
Less meaningful.
@cyberlyra Reclaim them.
they ruined one more thing — the em dash.
@cyberlyra For no reason at all, I recommend one of my favorite books:
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55338982-cultish
Big tech uses many cultish retention tactics too.
- Grok
- Code
- Generative
- Trust
- Slop
- Content
哈哈，看到这个列表真的笑了。尤其是"friend"和"like"，现在听到这两个词我第一反应都是Facebook按钮而不是本意了。
And I thougt calling any odd person you follow on the net Freund in German was a stupid translation. I didn't know it is as annoying for native speakers too.
BTW: experience
When an app's user experience was improved, everyone these days expects the worst.
For weird translations of these words in German, “hat geliket“ is at the top of my list.
For those that don’t speak German:
That’s “has liked” but with German grammar.
@cyberlyra Influence
@cyberlyra semantics, logic, philosophy, innovation, disruption, military grade, follower, transformation, synchronisation
@cyberlyra shocking how those words have been turned into toxic exploitative metrics.
Please don't forget about the very damaging recent additions "thinking" and "reasoning", bend them enough and they'll make people lose touch with their understanding of minds irreparably.
An LLM can not "think" nor "reason". The only thing it does is "generate". Any form of rebranding of that simple fact is wishful marketing speak.
@cyberlyra Funny how many of these are specific to social media, not tech per se. And the rest mostly fall under advertising or business analytics. Not that I'm trying to exonerate big tech or anything.
@znull @cyberlyra znull, you make a great point! Language is organic, evolving and changing over time to respond to users' inclinations. There's a huge segment of us users (actual speakers--not techs, not marketers) who have a say in the evolution of these words
@cyberlyra Reach - the poison for contemporary journalism that slowly errodes and undermines democracy by giving „alternate facts“, sensationalism and ragebait weight.
@cyberlyra Brilliant and so obvious in hindsight. Hope this is helpful.
Did I get them all (including replies)?
Friend; Like; Engagement; Smart; Connect; Contact; Intelligence; Search; Insights; Data; Chat; Mention; Reaction; Stories; Tweet; Viral; Community; Trust; Loyalty; Social; Webinar; Help; Enable; Integrate; Cloud; Server; Meta; Alphabet; Amazon
Also perhaps: Follow; Profile; Preferences; Feed; Stream; Tag; Post; Content; Platform; and App for appetizers.
Learn, Reach, Unlock, Invite, Swipe, Push, Notify, Dashboard, Manage, Control.
Experience is another
,
@cyberlyra They've been enshitified.
@cyberlyra trust
Loyalty
@GOKUSHRM @cyberlyra and don't forget privacy... We value your privacy, as in valuation.
@madargon @GOKUSHRM @cyberlyra lets also add "value" to the list..
@cyberlyra How about "Social" ?
@cyberlyra webinar needed some ruining right quick tho
@codinghorror @cyberlyra What my theory presupposes is that webinar was ruined from its very inception.
@ainmosni @cyberlyra never should have been incepted
@codinghorror @cyberlyra Can’t agree more.
@cyberlyra Only if you let them 
@cyberlyra
Help
Enable
Integrate
Cloud
…
@cyberlyra Add "Server" to that list. Im looking at you, Discord. 
@Catwoman69y2k @cyberlyra server - client architecture better than previous master - slave.
@evanwolf @Catwoman69y2k @cyberlyra That term is still used (master/slave) in many other parts of the world ! and I think it's more to do with #English language being turned all topsy-turvy cos of the internet; earlier on terms like e-zines (magazines) were coined but I don't remember anyone coming up with something new for 'friends' on the internet (like penpals) ...
@harib_murshidi This got me thinking, how about bitpals? Or bytepals?
Meta
Alphabet
Amazon
"Friend" always annoyed me. But when you put a list like this together and lay it all out, it's… depressing AF.