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Comment by metrix | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain?

Historically, "safety" referred to protection from physical harm. It has now expanded into psychological, emotional, economical realms. This had the (very much intended) effect of redefining "unsafe" from imminent and persistent threat to anything that makes me uncomfortable.

In America, in many states, you can be imprisoned for having an abortion.

Sharing your menstrual data and therefore having it available for subpoena is quite literally a physical safety risk.

If you don't understand, or disagree that the word "safety" is entirely appropriate here, can you talk about why?

> If you don't understand, or disagree

I understand, and I do agree. I simply answered the GPs question.

Really? Intentional infliction of emotional distress goes back to the late 1800s

Not sure how that's super relevant here? "my data could be used to accuse me of a crime" is a threat of physical harm anyway, unless you define being arrested as safe.

And I don't really think public opinion has shifted on that part. You could argue about emotional comfort or something, maybe.

Being arrested by a “public safety officer” is not safe at all.

You could probably find 10 separate videos of "public safety officers" assaulting innocent people by shooting them with rubber bullets for no discernible reason or by trampling them with horses (also for no discernible reason), and that's only from the last 2 days.

Ok, antifa, but there are over 10 million arrests in the US every year. Video is not in the same league of societal influence.

When your ideologies don't stand on their own merit, one last resort is to redefine words (and hope nobody notices) in order to force people to believe what you say.

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