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The only way to avoid Grammarly using your data for AI is to pay for 500 accounts

Source: front-end.social/

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.

jackpot ,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

is langaugetool foss? it’s an alternative

ALERT ,
@ALERT@sh.itjust.works avatar

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?

Polar , (edited )

No you’re not a bad person.

You have to realize that Lemmy is currently hardcore nerds. Linux, Firefox, and FOSS only users.

People here are so hateful against Sync for Lemmy (previously one of the most beloved Reddit apps) because it’s not FOSS.

It’s actually quite annoying.

lemmy.world/comment/2195946

sugar_in_your_tea ,

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 ,
@SMITHandWESSON@lemmy.world avatar

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.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

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.

Moonrise2473 ,

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

x_x ,

But ChatGPT offers an opt-out iirc, at the price of loosing the chat history feature.

Moonrise2473 ,

Yes but the opt-out was added only after they got banned

diffuselight ,

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

hypelightfly ,

Not using grammarly also works.

JackBruh ,

I have never touched it in years. Don’t need it if you put slightly more effort into writing.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yup, and even if you make mistakes, most people can understand you.

So do you best, and if it’s public facing and linked to your, get a peer to review it. No need for a service like this, there are plenty of people willing to correct your grammar for free on sites like Reddit (and probably Lemmy, but I’ve seen a lot less unsolicited advice here).

drmoose ,

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.

cwagner ,

languagetool.org

The free version can even be self-hosted.

drmoose ,

I’ve used language tool for a while and honestly it’s not very good and lacking integration in many tools.

cwagner ,

No idea about integrations, but regarding quality it was the opposite for me. The language recognition alone was leaps beyond Grammarly (though I can’t say if Grammarly has improved since then, as I switched years ago for privacy reasons), but also other fields.

drmoose ,

We used it company wide and did a pretty extensive evaluation vs Grammarly and while I was on the side of Languagetool the match up was completely one sided :|

cwagner ,

Company-wide, I guess it’s about pro? As I only use it to make fewer mistakes in internet comments, I’m a free user ;)

CaptObvious ,

I’d forgotten about LT. it’s as good as any of the other grammar checkers and better than a lot of them (looking at you, Microsoft).

sudoreboot ,
@sudoreboot@slrpnk.net avatar

Thank you for this! I’ve been reluctantly using Grammarly because I thought there were no alternatives.

adam ,

You have to request the self hosted version?

cwagner ,

Huh? Sources and binary download are all linked here: languagetool.org/dev

adam ,

Oh cool, their website says you need to email them 🤷‍♂️

cwagner ,

Weird, I landed there via their website :D

ReversalHatchery ,

They are just as shady as grammarly.

Years ago they have decommissioned their open source browser extension, made a new shiny one that is closed source, and when people asked why isn’t the new one open source, they just closed the issue without any explanation.
Their selfhosted offering also doesn’t worth much: the “magic sauce” is not included. But more importantly, now that I tried to look this up again, the only mention I have found about the selfhosted version on their website is a “contact us for the on-premise version” button on the “For Businesses” page, where you can write an email and they will probably respond with a price offering.

For selfhosting it, you may be better off with this fork as it enables premium features, but do note that this is not developed actively. Look at the “commits behind” counter and compare it to the “commits” counter below it.

cwagner ,

As I said in another comment, the server and source are both available from their website on languagetool.org/dev (linked via “Open-Source Development”), maybe the “mail us” is for the pro version? I’m perfectly happy with the free version which is absolutely good enough for me.

They are just as shady as grammarly.

Last I compared the privacy policy, that was not even close to true. Also “just as shady” for one company that releases at least part of their work as open source and one that is completely closed and “The only way to avoid Grammarly using your data for AI is to pay for 500 accounts”, is some kind of “HN-ers complaining about Mozilla and using Chrome to spite them” bullshit.

CaptObvious ,

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 ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

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.

kifujin ,
@kifujin@kbin.social avatar

at the amount of grammar mistakes

eager_eagle ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

should’ve used grammarly

CaptObvious ,

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

SheeEttin , (edited )

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.

CaptObvious ,

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 ,

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.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Muphry’s Law strikes again.

CaptObvious ,

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

CaptObvious ,

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…. 😄

CaptObvious ,

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.

eager_eagle ,
@eager_eagle@lemmy.world avatar

all of which is irrelevant to how grammarly works

CaptObvious ,

It is?

merde ,

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 🤷

CaptObvious ,

(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.

skullgiver , (edited )
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    CaptObvious ,

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

    skullgiver , (edited )
    @skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    CaptObvious ,

    Maybe customer support should take a stronger stance on understanding and being understood using standard dialect. At least the CSRs that I usually seem to talk with could use a good basic communication course.

    Students will use what they learn from me more than you think if they want a degree. If they don’t want one… well, we have several excellent nearby trade schools where they can learn a skill that won’t require formal standard English and will make them a whole lot more money in the long run (I’m honestly saying this respectfully).

    SheeEttin ,

    *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)

    argv_minus_one ,

    Email spam usually has heavily flawed English.

    I’ve heard that this is intentional. It would be a waste of the spammer’s time to be contacted by people who are smart enough to not be fooled. Those smart people won’t bother contacting the spammer and wasting the spammer’s time if they see grammatical errors in a message that purports to be from a reputable organization, so the spammer throws in some errors to make the smart people filter themselves out. Or so the theory goes.

    CaptObvious ,

    I’ve seen this filtering hypothesis, and it seems plausible. OTOH, it also gives James Veitch some fantastic material for his comedy routine.

    merde ,

    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?

    Sanctus ,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    If only there was a software to smell your own farts.

    Smell your own farts?

    Smell farts your own?

    CaptObvious ,

    Indeed

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