Comment by iamdamian
1 day ago
>> This is not a reflection of their talent, their effort, or their belief in what we were building. It's a reflection of the brutal reality of finding product-market fit in an environment that has fundamentally changed.
> Ironic, they use AI in their shutdown post that blames AI.
This… seems like regular prose to me. What makes you say so confidently it was written by AI?
There are more tells. Rule of three, short cliche sentences.
> We know how frustrating this is, and we hope you'll give us another look once we have something to show, we’ll save your usernames!
I think it's partly human. But ex:
> Network effects aren't just a moat, they're a wall.
isn't a natural sentence.
So no evidence at all, and just your need to point out possible LLM where ever you imagine it. You could be an LLM agent.
I think you're spot on. It feels like parts were edited with AI and parts were left alone.
> This isn't just a Digg problem. It's an internet problem. But it hit us harder because trust is the product.
The statement this is making is presumably the crux of the problem (Digg cannot survive without trust!) but it's worded so poorly that it's hard to imagine someone sat down and figured these three sentences were the best way to make the point.
I think anything with the “it’s not X it’s Y” is suspect these days. I cringe when I catch myself doing it.
That sounds like a you problem unconnected with reality.
How is that not a natural sentence? I think people are reading into stuff. That's just good writing.
Could it be generated? Sure. But there aren't the obvious tells you act like there are.
Here's the context:
"We underestimated the gravitational pull of existing platforms. Network effects aren't just a moat, they're a wall."
It's a mixed metaphor which doesn't make any sense. There are really very few ways in which this can be considered good writing - I guess the grammar is ok even if it is nonsense.
So let's break it down - underestimated the gravitational effects - ok, this is nice, like where it's going talking about these big competitors sucking in users, but then we have the metaphor extended to breaking point:
Network effects are a moat, but not just a moat, they're a wall (which is really not anything like a moat). So which of these 3 things are they, and why are we mixing the metaphors of gravity (pulling in customers), moats (competitive moat) and walls (walled gardens).
It's just all a bit nonsensical and the kind of fuzzy prose that seems superficially impressive without actually saying anything meaningful in which LLMs excel. Go try generating an article from just the heads in this article, and see how similarly it reads.
5 replies →
"Network effects aren't just a moat, they're a wall." is a VERY ChatGPT way to write. It's not proof, but the parent is right that this smells a bit of AI writing.
15 replies →
The rule of three is a basic writing structure taught to 12 year olds. I know people have given up on even the basics (capitalisation) in recent years but let's not just banish structured writing to "AI".
"This is not...this is" is a tell
I think we'll have to disagree on that. Humans write that way, too, and they've written that way for far longer than AI.
(Where do you think AI picked up its writing habits from?)
There isn't any "this is" in that sentence.
[flagged]
1 reply →