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Comment by tetrometal | Hacker News Reader

Interpreting your comment charitably, I assume you intended hyperbole when using the word force here, and in your comparison to actual force with respect to theft of private property.

Still, I think we should be careful with our words, especially lately as words are being redefined out of apparent expedience.

So, tedious or pedantic as it may be, I feel obligated to gently push back and point out that no force is being used in this circumstance, and that this situation is indeed not comparable to one in which actual aggressive force is being used, as in your bike theft example.

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I meant 'force' as in "coercion or compulsion".

> I think we should be careful with our words

I agree, but this goes both ways. So first, you shouldn't assume I didn't mean a word I choose to use just because you disagree with the usage (though in itself disagreeing is fine of course). Second, don't change my word 'force' to 'aggressive force', a term I never wrote (giving the sentence a whole new meaning).

Lastly, there was no "aggressive force" involved in stealing my bicycle. Someone took it in the middle of the night without my agreement (=coerced me to "give" the bicycle to them) in the same way that Google takes my data without my agreement.

So if you agree with the usage of 'force' in the bicycle case, I don't see an issue of using the same verb in Google case.

Again, feel free to disagree, but please don't change my words:-)

Well, I have to make some assumption about your use of a word. In this case, the options I perceived were literal force or hyperbole. In the interest of responding to the "strongest plausible interpretation"[0] of your comment, I assumed the latter.

Since you reject that assumption, I'll respond to the former instead:

There's a clear difference between the two scenarios - one uses physical force (the stolen bike example), the other (Google) does not. For this reason alone, they are incomparable.

Regarding "aggressive force": I never claimed you used the phrase. I'm merely characterizing the stolen bike example. There are two kinds of force that can be used in this context - aggressive and defensive. Aggressive force is force used against a person or their property against their will; defensive force is force used in prevention of aggression. Stealing a bike is clearly an example of the former.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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