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Let's start calling them what they are:

Freedom fighters.

"Hacking" carries quite a lot of negative connotations in most realms. These are people making sure you are able to make full use of your own stuff. There shouldn't be anything contentious about that.

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"Freedom fighters" has a lot of negative connotations in many realms as well. It evokes images of rebels using violence to push some political agenda. Sometimes for worthy causes, sometimes less so.

No, we're keeping the word "hacker".

While I agree with that image problem (I couldn't come up with any that didn't have it, and at least this one is descriptive)... I feel pretty confident claiming that "hackers" carries clearer and more consistent negative connotations to the general public (definitely not HN though).

I mean, we used to use the word "cracker" for this up until the late 90s. A hacker was someone who created something cool.

"A group of security researchers (aka hackers)" is an especially bad connection to be drawing for the general public.

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