Gonna scream into the void for a moment here about how while I'm glad there are people who recognize that what is defined as a "weed" is subjective and are subsequently critical of the use of that term to describe a plant, every post I've ever seen on the internet proseltyizing about the sin of calling a plant a weed neglects to mention that plant diseases play a role in what gets deemed a "weed."
Half of the "weeds" I tolerate in my garden are native, yet still considered noxious due to their propensity to dominate an area (like cattails, some really aggressive native species have the ability to create a monocrop). More importantly to me and anyone who grows foodcrops, "weeds" can be vectors of disease.
London rocket and western tansy mustard are common weeds where I live. They can host beat curly top virus and it's vector, the beat leaf hopper. Curly top virus is fatal and there is no cure. It can affect over 200 species of foodcrops. We have not been able to breed resistance to this virus into tomatoes, not sure about other crops but I lost HALF of my tomatoes to CTV this year.
Since all it takes is once single infected leaf hopper sampling your plant for just a second, there's no way to prevent it's transmission unless you somehow wrap your plants such that not a single leaf hopper can come in contact with them ever. Pesticides are of no use, since all the leaf hopper has to do is pierce your tomato plant a single time, and it can survive long enough to do that even if your plant is laced with pesticides.
Tomatoes aren't even the fucking preferred food of beat leaf hoppers, yet they will still pierce them anyway, so it's not like planting more attractive food sources/bait plants will protect your tomatoes. And curly top virus is just one example of many plant diseases hosted by "weeds," its not even one of the most economically damaging diseases since it's largely limited to the western US, although it did cause $100+ million in damages to tomato production in California about a decade ago.
And I know it's easy to be like "oh boohoo, who cares about lost money when herbicides cause millions if not billions of dollars in damage to ecosystems annually" which like, fair, but all I want is for people to stop believing that there's no legitimate reason to call a plant a weed. I get that if you don't grow food crops you will likely have no qualms with weeds harboring viruses, but the people who grow YOUR food certainly do.
If a plant species is a reservoir for an uncurable disease, if it's a host for a major pest that can threaten food resources, it's not just some benign little guy. It's the equivalent of like, the kid running around at the potluck who didn't wash their hands after coming out of the bathroom. Except imagine that the kid is spreading a deadly, incurable disease and you have no means of protecting yourself from other than just sheer luck that the kid never touches you. Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy since plants can't move it's actually usually bugs spreading diseases from plant to plant. But my point is, tye plant can't help being a diseases vector, but it's still a problem that it's a disease vector to our food sources. Please don't lecture me about how large scale industrial monocrop agriculture is so unsustainable and actually exacerbates all our plant disease and weed problems: I know. I'm just a simple home gardener who is upset about losing a bunch of plants. I was playing pacifist with the weeds and it's not like pulling the ones in my yard will save my garden from CTV next year since a leaf hopper can just pick up the virus from any of the weeds in my neighbors hard, but I want people to see how weeds can be harmful in a way I feel never gets discussed if you aren't like a serious farmer, since even most home gardeners probably don't take it seriously enough (not that there's anything wrong w casual gardening) to ID every ailment in their garden.
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