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Comment by agigao | Hacker News Reader

An extract from the article: “23andMe has said that its health tests can raise awareness about various medical conditions and empower _consumers_ to take charge of their health information.”

It’s a damn NEW DARK AGE way of thinking to refer PEOPLE through one single universal word all the time - A CONSUMER!

Choose any word from x, and carefully observe your thoughts afterwards:

”23andMe has said that its health tests can raise awareness about various medical conditions and empower _x_ to take charge of their health information.”

x = [“customers”, “individuals”, “humans”, “people”, “citizens”, etc]

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> It’s a damn NEW DARK AGE

It's a business, and if you give them money that makes you a consumer. What's wrong with that?

I think the issue is mainly that people are multi-dimensional and referring to them as `consumers` boxes them into "thing x that buys our stuff and exists for consumption" instead of framing is as "this is a person that we developed technology because it will improve their lives (and give us money)". Profit is important for a business and helps drive efficiency and measure effectiveness, but I think it is still good use language that doesn't dehumanize the fact that the world is made of people and meeting the needs of people is ultimately the important thing, not simply number in Excel that represent our cashflow.

Even customer is a better word, since it represents a person who comes to you voluntarily for an exchange of value, not just consumption.

Thank you! :)

Consumer is appropriate here and the word makes a difference. I'm a customer of 23andMe, but I'm not a consumer (purchased for others, have not used myself).

We live in a world where words mean something specific, generally to communicate an idea, not warm fuzzy feelings, and it's important that we use the right words so not to fall into the trap of multi-national businesses pretending their employees are "family" because it sounds nice.

It is quite easy to use "consumer" to create a seemingly plausible argument, which is interpreted quite different by many if you replace consumer with any one of the other words suggested.

It is probably because very few has consumer as a part of their self perception, hence many are likely to identify less, and empathize less with a group or person described as such.

It's not wrong in a technical sense, but it can be used to avoid a stronger public reaction to e.g people getting hurt by a business practices.

One might frame it like this: If my business transaction as a consumer ends up with the loss of an arm, I'm still the one who has to live with only one arm.

They are salespeople, and they should present us the fairy tale, not the technical lingo, for maximal effect.

That makes you a customer!

You're not the consumer. You're the product. The goal of these companies is to own a giant database of genetic information about the population to then sell that information to others.

If you were the consumer, you'd have to pay far more for a "test": these tests are just a method to get people to enter themselves in the database, and for them to sign their rights away, to 23andMe.

... and to monetize your genetic information infinitely without compensating you

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19063829 - McKinsey Advised Purdue Pharma How to ‘Turbocharge’ Opioid Sales, Lawsuit Says.

I’m not in any sense offended by the words company chooses, and neither I care about them being polite or not, the heart of the issue is the attitude and the word consumer expresses that very attitude rather accurately.

1. Netflix has consumers

2. Mubi has customers

I think you're being pedantic. "Consumer" is more descriptive than your other words.

Edit: I appreciate your concern about consumerism and the effects of being treated like cattle, I just think more descriptive words create better conversions.

Go on, develop the argument.

Shouldn't that be enough? The authors use more descriptive words to describe the circumstance, which creates better understanding. They could use, say, "humans", but not everyone uses their product and that would be a wasted opportunity for better language.

They're basically saying.... In a producer consumer economic design pattern....

"We're not just threads man!"

This is a topic that is often debated. Consumer has become the more generic term, particularly when speaking about the economy and about legal rights of people. Though it has the negative connotation from "consumerism" which is why the word is controversial and not considered polite.

In this particular case, there are two ways to read the statement from 23andMe. You could interpret "consumers" as the people who have actually bought a product from 23andMe. Or, you could interpret it as the overall population of people who have health information and may buy the product. With the first interpretation, I think "customers" would definitely be the better word and would fit with typical business etiquette. Though I think the second interpretation is what 23andMe actually meant, in which case "consumers" or "people" would be more appropriate. If I had written the 23andMe blog post, I would have used "people".

Comparing the google search results for "empower consumers" and "empower people" is quite interesting.

"citizens"? "residents", "tourists", "non resident aliens"?

Please tone down the histrionics. You're right, but only accidentally. They probably should have said 'customers' as that is the word that is the most accurate and specific from their pov.

if it said "people" would you not complain that it's not a public good?

You're going get upset about the word consumers and not complain about empower?

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