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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

Is there a difference?

Passive voice deflects responsibility and agency.

Loss happens, firings are a decision.

Ironically, Amazon's document writing culture stresses NOT using passive voice, but it seems acceptable to do so when you need to spin a PR.

in the uk job losses and firings are different things, with different meanings, so the criticism here is a bit off.

job loss / redundancy = there is no need for this role any more. your job is gone firing = you are not appropriate/fit/whatever for this role. your employment is gone. someone else can have your job

(the passive/active criticism is totally right though. this should read "Amazon CUTS / REMOVES 14,000 jobs")

Same as "hackers stole your data" versus "we left your data on an open S3 bucket"

We didn't fail to secure things because we spent our security budget on security theatre - we were just kindly offering those poor hackers money to support their families.

It’s the same language used when taking about “car accidents”

They aren’t accidents, it’s an inherent part of how we designed cars and roads and we decided as society that we are ok with thousands of people killed by cars.

killed by drivers, cars are inanimate objects

Killed semantics includes intentionality (and lack of), while dying by accident clearly removes any intentionality whatsoever.

So it's much more faithful to truth to talk about accidents than by killing, even if both terms are semantically correct.

It’s intentional though see above comment by throw0101c.

I agree that it’s a hard pill to swallow especially if you are US American.

> I agree that it’s a hard pill to swallow especially if you are US American.

Can you point me to countries that don't deflect agency in accident reporting?

Here's a headline from just today in the UK:

> Man airlifted to hospital after pedestrian hit

First line in of the story:

> A man has been airlifted to hospital after a vehicle hit a pedestrian.

You are right, it’s an international problem.

But from my experience few nations are so dependent on the car as the US. It so very similar in Germany where I’m from but mostly because it’s such an important part of the economy. But in a big city you can easily live without a car. I found this almost impossible in the US.

> It’s the same language used when taking about “car accidents”

See perhaps the book There Are no Accidents by Jessie Singer:

> We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term “accident” itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators.

[…]

> In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.

* https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accident...

For automobiles specifically:

* https://crashnotaccident.com

* https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/crash...

* https://www.roadpeace.org/working-for-change/crash-not-accid...

Michigan.gov website references Merriam-Webster dictionary definition "an unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance".

Then it says no one is at fault, but the definition specifically included carelessness and ignorance which does imply fault.

> Calling a crash an “accident” suggests no one is at fault. In reality, crashes result from preventable actions like distraction, inattention, or risky driving.

But all of these go under carelessness / ignorance.

And there is always a party that's at fault traffic accidents.

Normal dialogue:

Bob: I got into a traffic accident.

Alice: Who was at fault?

Bob: ...

“It’s not what you say, but how you say it” syndrome.

It’s like a rocket flew into the refugee camp vs the occupation forces struck the refugee camp with a rocket.

My favourite is during terrorist attacks in Europe, it's always like "car attacks crowd". Like the car's wife had left it and it had decided to go out with a bang.

Damn cars why do they do that! Ironically soon cars may start actually doing it.

The problem is, there isn't much initial facts to base on, other than that a vehicle has plowed into a crowd. In the early 30-60 minutes, you often don't even know how many people died and how many are injured because emergency services are still working on rescue (alive people) and recovery (dead people).

Maybe it's political or religious terrorism, maybe it's suicide-by-cop, maybe it's a generic mental health issue (think schizophrenics whose head voice tells them to commit violence), maybe it's a health issue (heart attack, driver floors the gas pedal), maybe it's a streetrace gone wrong, maybe it's a DUI, maybe it's a mechanical issue (loss of brake/steering), maybe it's a geriatric driver who just doesn't have any idea where he even is, maybe it's a driver blindly following Maps and ignoring the policeman winking at him, thus not noticing he's heading right for a rally.

You see, the list of issues why a car plows into a crowd is very very long, and often it takes the police hours to determine what's going on. They gotta interview bystanders and victims, they gotta obtain and review camera footage, possibly search the driver's home and digital devices - because unlike Twitter pseudo-journalists and click/ragebait "news" media, police can normally be held accountable if they claim something in public that doesn't turn out to be true.

I think usually the vehicle has not, say, been flung unoccupied into a crowd by an oversized slingshot experiment gone wrong.

So it'd be nice if they'd say like "a man has ploughed into a crowd" - we'll safely assume he didn't use an actual plough since I hear those are fairly slow.

It does make a difference regarding people viewing news outlets as informers rather than an arm of some kind of agenda.

If you say "a man has ploughed into a crowd", you'll get the usual suspects shouting "why don't you state THE RELIGION/THE ETHNICITY of the man". We've been through this in Germany too often, the racists immediately come out of the sewer spouting their garbage.

That seems a less important bother than say that a man has ploughed into a crowd.

Well, not in Europe because that's the culture, but it objectively is.

And I mean, it's not like the racists hear "a car" and think "oh it was just a car on its lonesome, not like driven by a person from [group that I hate]", do they...

Normally it’s the terrorists that are so bright that they fire rockets into their own territory. So, “rocket flew” is actually being nice to them.

The same difference as in "He died of heart attack" and "She was killed in a car crash".

Or one of my favorites, "was hit by a car". While true in the strict physical sense, that’s like reporting that someone was "shot by a gun".

Maybe it's an effort to be more polite than "by some prick who can't drive".

I suppose there's at least one example of someone being hit by a car that slipped off a car transporter too. "Had car thrown at him by negligent shipping company" would be a more click worthy headline though

"killed by an officer's duty weapon" or "died in an officer-involved shooting" are the ways police departments tend to put it.

Fox news spin: "his heart murdered him, as we all know all hearts secretly want to do to all of us".

Passive vs. active voice. "Job losses" is chickenshit language.

If you're going to fire people, at least have the integrity to own your actions, instead of trying to make it sound like something that "just happened".

That would make Bezos look bad .

"Regrettable attrition".

Going to go wash my hands after typing that.

>Passive vs. active voice. "Job losses" is chickenshit language.

"Job losses" isn't passive voice. "Jobs were lost" would be passive voice.

Why are people so hung up on "job losses", as if we don't hear this every day? Who cares?

You're being pedantic for no good reason. You know what I meant.

If you don't care about this conversation, why are you participating?

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