[lvass]

"In cloud computing, the term zero-knowledge (or occasionally no-knowledge or zero access) refers to software services that store, transfer or manipulate data such that it is only accessible to its owner, not to the service provider."

[drdaeman]

> In cloud computing

Your quote heavily misspells "bullshit marketing" ;)

For marketing reasons, people try give things fancy names, even if those names are misused and are completely wrong. This is exactly what happened with all those "zero-knowledge encrypted cloud storages" and so on.

[agucova]

This seems to imply terms can only have and only one “right” definition, which is not how languages work, at all.

Clearly there are two big clusters of meaning for “zero-knowledge” and they seem distinct enough to not overlap. Seems fine to me.

[drdaeman]

Well, you're right.

My problem is that they started doing this my using "zero knowledge" as a term from cryptography. The trend had started in early 2010s or so, as cryptocurrencies and all things crypto became popular, people realized they could use that vibe for profit.

So cloud storage providers in particular had realized "zero knowledge" sounds cool and fancy and started using it in their marketing despite stealthily assigning it entirely different meaning from where they took it from (well, some had their cryptographic designs all backwards recognizably even to my uneducated brain - false promises when most customers don't have sufficient knowledge and awareness, business as usual). They were critiqued for it, and they just shrugged it off because who gives a fuck about some angry nerds insisting on some correct word usage. And so this shit caught on, and yes, now we have two meanings.

I suppose I got to let it go, but I feel upset about the outcome.