[llm_nerd]

Money laundering has become a default catch all term for "monetary misuse / suboptimal allocation". At least among the general public.

I worked in AML tech for a bank earlier in my career. I put up a fight against this misuse of terminology for a while, but eventually just gave up. Just embrace that everything is money laundering to many people and life is easier.

[chneu]

Words in general don't really mean much anymore, online anyway.

It reminds me of when health fads take off. Everyone "has OCD" or whatnot. I'd talk to people and they've given me a rundown of who they claim they were, but lol, they weren't that person.

Everyone can identify and use words however they want. Once it goes viral the meaning of the word changes. It's difficult to parse who people are nowadays cuz of it.

There's no sense fighting it. Someone will tell you you're wrong, you're out of touch, you just don't get it, or "your vibe isn't right".

[estearum]

> Money laundering has become a default catch all term for "monetary misuse / suboptimal allocation".

No it definitely has not

[llm_nerd]

Among the generally misinformed public, which I was clearly referring to, yes, it absolutely has. Everything is money laundering.

Do you think I was literally saying the financial definition has changed?

[hkt]

I don't think he thought that, he was probably expressing the view that he doesn't think the representative person's understanding of the term is the same as yours.

I have to confess, I've never heard anyone talk about money laundering in the way you suggest.

[llm_nerd]

The root of this thread literally uses it in the way I observed. So...never? It's literally right there! I see similar uses everywhere (speaking specifically of the general public, not financial industry professionals), calling every misallocation, misspend, or even simple fraud money laundering. Reddit, HN, Facebook, LinkedIn...everything is money laundering.

Again, I'm kind of an expert in AML, so I probably pay attention to it way more than you do, and probably have a much better perspective on this. I constantly see people refer to almost all misuse or misallocation of funds as money laundering.

Maybe you just don't know what money laundering actually is? Because the vast majority of the public certainly doesn't.

[ameliaquining]

Personally (n = 1), this thread was the first time I've seen the term "money laundering" used hyperbolically like this.