I think it's equally understandable, and monster is objectively a more fun word. Seems like not a big deal?
Monster in the middle is at least cute and conveys the authors intent that this agent is untrusted and assumed malicious.
People in this thread clearly don't like being called a monster which I think demonstrates exactly that words matter and these ones are doing their job.
It turns out even cloud flare used man-in-the-middle in the project, because it was in some other code, I guess: https://github.com/cloudflare/mitmengine/blob/master/process...
(line 24; now wait for some one to realize his "error" and change it.)
> Some have protested that "monster" has negative connotations, but anyone who grew up with Sesame Street or modern Disney movies knows that’s an unfair stereotype. And Monster is more fun. You like fun, don't you? Don't you?!?
You are not a monster if you are doing it, it's corporations who are monsters if they try to prevent you from doing it and you are fighting for freedom from them. So it's freedom-in-the-middle.
If you are a free software developer reverse-engineering a graphics driver, you sure want to be able to intercept the traffic between the graphics card and the CPU (I don't do driver development so I might be completely off, but I hope you get the point anyway).
However, if you are having a conversation with a secret source, you want this freedom to not be intercepted.
In this scenario, the app developer certainly has an interest not to be intercepted, however the user and actual owner of the device likely would benefit from interception.