Posted by ksec 1 day ago
Never understood their browser integration though, ugh. Scanning private messages was already a bad look, I shouldn’t be surprised…
We have no proof but it feels like someone asked Claude how to reduce churn and picked an option.
I guess consumers are going to have to “push back” often in the near future.
But then it's only admins, not all users, and it may make sense in case the workspace owner is distracted/incapacitated etc.
What ruins the "we care about your workspace" part though is how the message is phrased as a threat. Fail to pay and you'll lose acces to this and that and that other thing...
I find it incredibly disrespectful.
We use a self-hosted OSS LanguageTool server that's containerized and runs in a private, on-prem cluster to provide good performance and be HA, but it only works on our corporate network or when using a VPN connection while roaming/remote.
It's incredibly reliable.
It's also devoid of AI/LLM bullshit for writing. Spelling and grammar rules, a few notes about long sentences, that's it.
However, LanguageTool nerfs their other plugins (like mail plugins) to require a subscription service.
I've pleaded with them for years to please allow me to pay a subscription price but use our internal server simply because we don't want/need a spelling/grammar tool to send content to the cloud.
We don't want free. We want private.
The odd thing is that the official LanguageTool browser plugins DO allow use of a self-hosted LanguageTool server; clearly it's doable. There's a poorly maintained obsidian plugin that also works(ish). But that's about it.
We live with these limitations.
A properly funded public education doesn't cover speech-recognition-driven errors. I've talked about this before, but when you write using speech recognition, you need to shift from speaking spoken speech to speaking written speech.
Spoken speech is very sloppy with grammar. We forgive a tremendous amount of detail, forgive a lot of errors because we're focused on what they are saying, not how they are saying it. Grammarly also catches speech-recognition errors.
The usual retort is that one should spend more energy on proofreading your writing; many speech recognition users come to understand that your brain sees what you said, not what's on the page. The fix is to stick your writing in a drawer long enough to forget what you wrote, which isn't a great plan when you need an email in 5 minutes.
So, if not Grammarly, what?
Just went through my first corrections, and I think I like it. It isn't as aggressive as Grammarly, and I have mixed feelings about that, as I thought Grammarly did improve my writing, clarity, and presentation. It also feels easier to learn by example and reinforce better grammar from the start.
I tried out the AI rewrite, and man, it hits the uncanny valley hard.
---- Below is the above corrected by grammarly
Thanks for the reference. I'm trying it out now and will see how well it works over the next few days, but if it works for me, I'll probably ditch my Grammarly subscription and switch to this package (assuming it's a saner company).
Just went through my first corrections, and I think I like it. It isn't as aggressive as Grammarly, and I have mixed feelings about that, since I thought Grammarly improved my writing, clarity, and presentation. It also feels easier to learn by example and reinforce better grammar from the start.
I tried out the AI rewrite, and man, it hits the uncanny valley hard.
[Edit: Corrected a sentence that was missed by both Grammarly and LanguageTool. See if you can figure out which one it was]
1. Not remotely everyone properly educated will be able to write properly due to personal/health traits
2. Not remotely everyone speaks English as a native tongue
3. Most people in the world speak languages of a different family (and grammar) than English
Most analytics tools have the ability to create segments (for example, you could create a group of users who are part of an account that is not going to renew their plan).
And then they have the ability to send emails and notifications to users in a segment.
I wonder how much companies are running agents with access to their analytics tools, and letting them build their own campaigns.
I asked ChatGPT to design a campaign to reduce churn for a SaaS like Grammarly, and it came up with a very similar idea.