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Comment by llm_nerd | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

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

It's very very common. Look at the social media comments on any video that relates to fraud, grift, scams, or even a poorly run business. People say any use of money they don't like is "money laundering".

I think this does extend to fraud, grift, scams, and other illegal behavior. I have never seen "money laundering" extended to just "being bad at business."

On posts about companies spending so much money on AI (datacenter buildouts, tokkenmaxxing, etc.) comments wonder why they are doing this and replies say "money laundering", "definitely money laundering", etc. I'll post an example if I come across another one.

You guys do realize that part of money laundering is making it look like you're just bad at business, yeah? "Oops we accidentally overpaid some incompetent guys for this data center" is a smokescreen for "I am taking your data center money and giving it to my cousin"

From a strict "anti-money laundering" standpoint (how the bank thinks), money laundering is taking money that is suspected as being proceeds of criminal activity ("dirty" money) and making it indistinguishable from "clean" money. "Being bad at business" in a way that matches the definition of nepotism is not money laundering. There is a necessary component that the money is "dirty" and needs to be "cleaned", hence it is "laundered".

How about you just state clearly yes/no:

Are you accusing Wikipedia of actual money laundering?

If you are accusing them of being bad at business or bloat (which is all that's alleged in the article you linked to), then the answer is NO. So you should just say NO.

If you are accusing Wikipedia of actual money laundering, that is concealing the source of illegally gotten money, then the answer is YES.

Please reply YES or NO so we can have a single conversation about the claim being made.

Unfortunately the official definition of 'literally' now means both exact and exaggeration, so it is impossible to know what you are saying here /s

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