Facebook No Longer Likes the Word 'Users'

Seems like a hollow argument more about semantics to me. Yeah yeah, we get it. Your users are people too.

To the local corner store, I’m a customer; to Southwest, a passenger. Each institution may refer to their customers in a different manner, but it does nothing to change the fact that they are a customer/consumer.

>As somebody once said, it’s kind of arrogant to think that the only reason that people exist is to use what you built. They actually have lives, like, outside of the experience they have using your product. So the first step to designing in a human-centered way is to recognize that they’re humans.

Just because I am a "user" does not mean I only use your product

This is an interesting approach to design: emphasizing the relationship between your product (the part) and the user (as a whole).

However, it's a bit misguided to read into the word "user" like this and I'm not sure the solution is as simple as substituting "person" and "people" for it.

It's often presumptuous—and rather telling—when a product attempts to be relevant or meaningful outside of its own context.

On contrast, by redefining "users" as "people" we stripe the term of one of its fundamental qualities. You might notice that "people" is now redefined as stakeholders that get somehow affected by - but not necessarily make (direct) use of - your product.

Am I the only one who finds this blurring of concepts disturbingly Orwellian???