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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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.
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I’ve used language tool for a while and honestly it’s not very good and lacking integration in many tools.
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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 :|
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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).
You have to request the self hosted version?
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Oh cool, their website says you need to email them 🤷♂️
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Thank you for this! I’ve been reluctantly using Grammarly because I thought there were no alternatives.
Not using grammarly also works.
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Oh they are downright into extortion. Try asking them to delete your data and see what happens.
Chatgpt was banned in Italy because they didn’t allow the opt-out. Wonder what happens if someone flags this to some European agency…
But ChatGPT offers an opt-out iirc, at the price of loosing the chat history feature.
Yes but the opt-out was added only after they got banned
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.
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.
at the amount of grammar mistakes
should’ve used grammarly
They’d’ve gotten it wrong too. Prepositions and postpositions are their own category of linguistic hell, especially in idioms and phrasal verbs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
all of which is irrelevant to how grammarly works
It is?
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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.
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I’ve seen this filtering hypothesis, and it seems plausible. OTOH, it also gives James Veitch some fantastic material for his comedy routine.
*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)
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Certain uni composition students had better learn to write flawless English if they expect to earn their desired grade in my courses.
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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).
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.
is langaugetool foss? it’s an alternative
