specifically, this tends to happen with words which describe one direction of a relationship. specific examples include saying "descendant" when they mean "ancestor," and saying that youtubers are "sponsoring" a company when actually the youtuber is the one being sponsored
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in reply to @bethposting's post:
I think I speak for literally everyone when I say everyone is quite nonplussed about this ;)
iirc this is pretty common with converses and a common cause of semantic change (see lend, for example)
and saying that youtubers are "sponsoring" a company when actually the youtuber is the one being sponsored
i wonder if "graduating from school" is an earlier instance of this shift happening in english. in most other european languages (that i know anyway) the student "is graduated" in the passive voice, and english seems to be unique in treating it as something the student actively does