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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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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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).
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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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).
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
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?
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.
Grammarly sometimes makes… interesting… suggestions.
Grammarly seems optimized to make the user sound smart, not necessarily to make them type flawless English. Only spam bots, AI, and nitpickers write out perfect English all the time.
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.
It’s a common theory.
That’s not the only spam out there, though. The real dangerous email is the phishing spam that’s written to convince the CEO or CFO to send money to the wrong account. You can’t go all Nigerian Prince if you want to steal the big bucks from companies.
Marketing spam is also often grammatically correct.
I’ve seen this filtering hypothesis, and it seems plausible. OTOH, it also gives James Veitch some fantastic material for his comedy routine.
Certain uni composition students had better learn to write flawless English if they expect to earn their desired grade in my courses.
For sure, but they won’t practice their perfect paper English outside of your courses. The PDFs they submit will be (mostly) correct, but I doubt they’ll put as much effort into their emails, let alone emails to anyone else. It’s not like customer support will correct you on your they’re/their/there/deer mistakes.
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
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?
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.
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.
