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"For your protection."

The most abused and dishonest phrase of the 21st century.



They always add that incorrect “y”.


Also at top of the list: “We care about your privacy” (and not that we are required by law to give you these options that follow)


"We value your privacy" is even better.

That's actually an honest one, since they know exactly what the value is of the PII that they sell to third parties.


"They know the price of everything and the value of nothing."


Right there with "for us to deliver better user experience"


Twitter's users are its advertisers.

Tiwtter's product is you.


We criticize free services all the time for this, but I think that paying users are monetized all the same. Using American examples, the DMV sells data, internet providers are selling user data, credit card companies are selling user data... so it's not like any other companies don't monetize their users in other ways.


This is true. Paid services also tend to parasitise their legitimate users and maximise revenues.

A key difference is that in the Twitter case, there's no monetary penalty which can be imposed by the host class (that is, the unpaied content contributors).

Much of the "harvest as much data as possible" element is also driven by fundamental power and monopolistic differences.


An important finesse.


uh, 'to protect the children' would like to have a word.


Next to: 'no need to worry about privacy if you've got nothing to hide'.


"For purposes of National Security . . .", a close second.


> The most abused and dishonest phrase of the 21st century.

The T&C equivalent of "your call is very important to us"?


Right before "We are experiencing higher than usual call volumes."


Along with "For your own safety".


"safety" is a term that's been abused since at least 1793: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Public_Safety


The translation is inaccurate. It means safety in the same way as the salvation of the soul for Christians, but in a non-religious way, and applied to all of society. Yes, they were both quite grandiose in their wordings and full of themselves.

Safety, as it is commonly used, would better be translated, in French, as "sûreté". "Salut" would be a much, much stronger word.

Although I do see your point.


Well damn, that ruins one of my favourite points.

But I'm still not quite sure what the French word "salut" means. Is there not a simple one-word English translation? What exactly is the remit implied by the name Comité de salut public?


"Salut" in this context translates as "salvation" in the sense of "preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss".


Exactly. "Committee of Public Salvation". Sounds weird.

So, in this case, considering they considered themselves the defenders of the greatest ideology of all time and the (worthy) people, and were at war with both foreign countries and some of their own people, I’d say it'd mean something like:

"Committee in charge of delivering the country, the Republic (the idea of Republic itself; not just it’s French incarnation) and freedom / democracy (even though they weren’t quite democratic) from utter ruin and certain doom"

But that’s quite a mouthful.


Wait — you mean "Sanitized for your protection" on glasses at cheap motels isn't true?


I think it stopped being true at the word, "Sanitized".




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