this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023

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The only way to avoid Grammarly using your data for AI is to pay for 500 accounts (yiffit.net)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Source: https://front-end.social/@fox/110846484782705013

Text in the screenshot from Grammarly says:

We develop data sets to train our algorithms so that we can improve the services we provide to customers like you. We have devoted significant time and resources to developing methods to ensure that these data sets are anonymized and de-identified.

To develop these data sets, we sample snippets of text at random, disassociate them from a user's account, and then use a variety of different methods to strip the text of identifying information (such as identifiers, contact details, addresses, etc.). Only then do we use the snippets to train our algorithms-and the original text is deleted. In other words, we don't store any text in a manner that can be associated with your account or used to identify you or anyone else.

We currently offer a feature that permits customers to opt out of this use for Grammarly Business teams of 500 users or more. Please let me know if you might be interested in a license of this size, and I'II forward your request to the corresponding team.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not using grammarly also works.

[–] diffuselight 30 points 1 year ago

Oh they are downright into extortion. Try asking them to delete your data and see what happens.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Chatgpt was banned in Italy because they didn't allow the opt-out. Wonder what happens if someone flags this to some European agency...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

if only there was a software that can rewrite the last phrase "selling back your data back to you" 😋

selling your data back to you?

selling back your data to you?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Indeed

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It still isn't clear why anyone uses a product developed by non-native speakers to check their writing. For anyone who knows grammar, Grammarly sometimes makes... interesting... suggestions.

[–] eager_eagle 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

As a non-native speaker I'm surprised to the amount of grammar mistakes native speakers make. Being a native speaker is not a testament to how much of the language you know. And even that being true, it's not like a real human corrects your text, so the creators being native or not is pretty much irrelevant.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

at the amount of grammar mistakes

[–] eager_eagle 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

should've used grammarly

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They’d’ve gotten it wrong too. Prepositions and postpositions are their own category of linguistic hell, especially in idioms and phrasal verbs.

[–] SheeEttin 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They'dn't've necessarily gotten it wrong. With a big enough dataset, an ML tool should be pretty accurate, at least in that it will make the same choices as most people have made in their writing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They'd'n'tve

Apostrophe mistakes aside, no native speaker would stack contractions like this. There’s an upper limit of three words in a single contracted form. It would be “They wouldn’t’ve gotten” or “They’d not’ve gotten.”

ML tools don’t write grammatically correct complex sentences precisely because their training sets contain too many discrepancies. They may learn how to apply prescriptive rules consistently one day, perhaps even one day soon, but this is not that day.

[–] SheeEttin 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Who says there's an upper limit? You might not be one of those people, but I'm.

Also, that'll teach me to try to write tricky comments while also doing other things. Fixed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Muphry's Law strikes again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

LOL! How did I not know about this? Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Who says there's an upper limit?

Well, linguists say it. But you do you, friend.

Also, that'll teach me to try to write tricky comments while also doing other things.

LOL! Right there with you. If I had a dollar for every time this happens to me…. 😄

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Native speakers don’t usually make major grammar mistakes. They may not follow prescriptive rules, but they’re generally understandable by other native speakers because grammar is so deeply embedded in their subconscious that they can’t help handling the language correctly. You do the same in your native language. Everyone does.

The problem with non-natives, and I include myself as a non-native speaker of a few languages, is that we don’t usually have the same instincts. It would be pretty arrogant to tell a native that they don’t know how to use their own language when we, almost by definition, cannot possibly understand it in the same way that they do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

well said/written

it's not only that "we don't usually have the same instincts", we have a burden of confusing loans, imports, translations, false friends &c.

When you start dealing with gendered languages, it's even worse. There's no logic to it. A hand is a she in one language, a he in another and neutral in third.

also, this pronoun question of culture wars is ridiculous for someone who can speak non-gendered languages 🤷

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

(Love your handle)

I get what you're saying about gendered languages. But if you speak one long enough, even as a non-native, you'll start to develop a feel for genders and be able to predict them to some degree. So far as I know, the mechanism that determines gender is so deeply subconscious that no one has been able to find and articulate its rules, but it seems to exist.

Re: culture wars - The pronoun question is probably moot point in truly genderless languages. English, unfortunately, is not completely genderless, so it's a bone of contention in the current climate.

[–] eager_eagle 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

all of which is irrelevant to how grammarly works

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It is?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

[–] SheeEttin 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

*nitpicker (but I prefer pedant in polite circles, and grammar nazi on the Internet, or at least I did until actual nazis started showing up again)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Certain uni composition students had better learn to write flawless English if they expect to earn their desired grade in my courses.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

[–] drmoose 3 points 1 year ago

It feels like common sense to don't use Spyware on anything private. I only use Grammarly on my public posts and it's good at that. If you let someone spy on your private emails etc. Then that's on you tbh.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

is langaugetool foss? it's an alternative

[+] [email protected] -7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What's wrong with using one's typed text to improve Grammarly? Why is anyone obsessed with opting out of improving products using the results of their usage? I always allow products to use my data, track my activity, send non-anonymous bug reports, etc. Am I a bad person?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You're not a bad person, you're just not concerned with privacy or the value of things you make.

I almost never allow any of that because I expect companies to compensate me for helping them improve their product. If they can't provide a quality product without that, they should increase their prices to hire more staff or pay customers for access to their data.

That said, I'm a lot more willing to agree for open source projects because there isn't a profit motive there, and it's a small way of helping the project. I still occasionally refuse (esp. for a company like Mozilla that often ignores community feedback), though I'll try to help in other ways (evangelism, detailed bug reports, etc).

But if a company is profiting off me, I expect as least a little of that back if I'm going to allow them to use my data.

[–] SMITHandWESSON 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I totally get what youre saying, but its going to be nearly impossible for you to live up to that if you use social media in any form.

The statement you just typed is probably going to be scrapped and used to train AI. The only way you can win is to not use the internet to interact with people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yup, and that's a large part of why I don't use larger SM. Yeah, Meta, Twitter/X, Microsoft, Google, etc can scrape lemmy, but that's unlikely to be a huge source of info. But if they scrape, they scrape, and I guess I'm okay with that.

My larger concern is with privacy. I try to mitigate the privacy concerns by recreating my SM accounts every year or two, so that way at least I won't likely be doxxed.

So on the side, I'm looking into ways of building more robust SM. I'm interested in fully decentralized systems, which can optionally be encrypted and limited to a few. ActivityPub gets close, but it still relies on public servers to store content, and many services aren't encrypted. I'm more interested in p2p systems like IPFS, and I think a reasonably intuitive system can be built in that way. In fact, I'm planning on building a lemmy-compatible instance that uses Iroh as the backend storage and connection mechanism once Iroh gets to a usable state.

But I'm not exactly a zealot here. I didn't switch to lemmy until Reddit announced its third party API pricing change (I switched before my app of choice shut down), because I value convenience. Lemmy is now big enough for me, so I'm looking into the next step.