system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Confusion about the definition of socialism

So when I look up the definition of socialism, it says it’s the government controlling the means of production. However, whenever someone is talking about the government redistributing wealth, people say “that’s socialism”. But how is that socialism? Isn’t the definition of socialism just the government basically owning businesses? Wouldn’t wealth redistribution be a different thing, since the government isn’t actually owning the means of production, they’re just taking from one person to give to another?
gpt
There is a related concept called "social democracy", which generally advocates for a greater degree of redistribution to help the disadvantaged and government regulation of private businesses. Despite its reformist policies, social democracy supporters generally have no fundamental objections to capitalism--they believe that most of the economy should be capitalist, with redistribution and government regulation to control rent-seeking and lessen the raw harshness of inequality and creative destruction. 

Scandinavian countries are particularly famous for their model of social democracy. Other continental European countries, like Germany and Spain, also allude to social democracy in their constitutions. But they are still capitalist--they have no intention of replacing private ownership over the means of production. People from those countries are perplexed when Americans call them socialist, or compare them to the Soviet Union. That's partly due to Americans using the word socialist as a slur. 

Further to the left of the social democrats are "democratic socialists", who legitimately believe in the common (i.e. government) ownership of the means of production. As an example, the post-WWII British Labour Party engaged in a massive nationalization program. In addition to welfare programs like pensions and collective bargaining rights, they nationalized industries such as healthcare, energy, transportation, electricity, telecoms and certain banks. 

Many of those industries were later privatized, but famously the National Health Service remain to this day -- much of the British healthcare industry is still state-run, like public libraries or police departments in the U.S.

That said, many traditional socialist parties who once believed in actual socialism eventually became social democrats. In that process, they also engaged in the redefinition of "socialism", e.g. the UK Labour Party defining socialism as "*for the many*, *not the few*", which is technically social democracy.

TLDR: technically socialists believe in massive nationalization of industry, social democrats just want more redistribution. But some social democrats and some right wing Americans also use the word socialism to refer to social democracy, so that confuses things.