I'm guessing it's an alternate expansion that was popularized by some group who was deeply doubtful about this technology.

"Trusted Platform Module" sounds good. But what it actually means is that the platform can be "trusted" to place the interests of third parties over the owner of the device. Stallman referred to it as a "Treacherous Platform Module" because he saw it as betraying the user.

I'm guessing that "Technical Protection Module" is a similar attempt to "de-propagandize" the acronym, and that it caught on with some group of users long ago.

Exactly. Whenever the name of some computing concept makes the end user into the adversary, we should de-propagandize that name. See also: Digital Rights Management (DRM). Whose "rights" are benefiting from it? Certainly not the users'. See also: Copy Protection. What is being protected? Not the user.

That makes sense, but instead of long ago it would be today, as the search engines aren't showing prior use of "Technical Protection Module". I don't know if will catch on or not.

They don't have to be outsourced to this to happen. To put out lengthy press-releases, you hire a copywriter. You don't ask an engineer to write them.

People make mistakes sometimes. And this one is not a huge one -- the meaning is conveyed fine.

I've also seen that exact incorrect explanation of what "TPM" stands for in several other places now. I'm guessing that someone authoritative made the error and now it's being propagated by people who aren't otherwise familiar with the terminology.

Google/Bing say otherwise, at least when it comes to the exact pharase "Technical Protection Module".

Or written with help from chat gtp, I've seen it hallucinate similar mistakes before.

Ah actually it is ChatGPT, you’ve made a common mistake. Perhaps you are an AI?

As we all know, ChatGPT stands for “Chat General Purpose Tool”, as it is an artificial general intelligence.

I beg to differ, it is "Chat Guanosine TriPhosphate", a talkative nucleotide composed of guanine and three phosphate groups (the tri- prefix indicates three of something).

Hmm I thought it was ChaiGPT. People were calling the API ChatGPT so they changed the name to that of a beloved beverage and JavaScript assertion library.