Hacker News Reader

According to Google, abuse means the improper use of something. Regardless of whether it was accidental or intentional, abuse is abuse.

View on HN

Oh, come now. The definition of the verb is "use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse". That implies willfulness. Accidents and bugs are not abuse; were they, we wouldn't have separate words for them.

Or, put another way: I hear you inadvertently spilled water on your wife at the dinner table last night; tell me, for how long have you been abusing her?

That's a bad analogy. Spilling water on your wife and domestic violence are very different things. Both the inadvertent (and arguably unconstitutional) collection of Americans' data by the NSA and the willful abuse of power by the NSA are pretty horrendous acts, whichever you choose to believe happened.

You talk about the verb when we're talking about the noun. I call cherry-picking. And yet the point still stands. You can accidentally misuse something. How many people have accidentally misused C pointers?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com