[ntstr]

No one noticed the parent post is LLM slop?

Spams of groups of threes (open, chaotic, full of real voices - filtered, throttled, and buried - users, privacy, real expression)

It's not just X - it's Y type of sentence structure Vapid marketing style writing that has no real substance (Maybe it’s not about saving the old web. Perhaps it’s time to build a new one)

Of course, there are emdashes too, they may not betray LLM alone as they exist in literature and a minority like to use them in internet comments but when they are present along with other signs of slop they are still a strong tell, particularly when they are numerous.

Is this satire? or trolling? it is concerning everyone replies to it as if there had been human thought behind this drivel.

[karaterobot]

Typically LLMs don't put spaces between em dashes and the words that surround them—which is the correct orthography, I should point out. Humans often put spaces around them when they shouldn't, like in the example you quoted. I don't know if it's AI or not, but if you ask an AI to use a sentence with an em dash in it, it won't include spaces.

[vonunov]

How can "correct" have any meaning in style-preference territory? Chicago doesn't put spaces around dashes. AP does. Oxford follows Chicago, and the rest of the UK uses spaced en dashes instead. For typewriting -- and, by extension, typing -- this well-established convention appears (attested in Garner's Usage, if you're wondering). Chicago always spaces ellipses . . . and AP doesn't, no matter how ugly it looks next to a period. ... Who's correct?

I've seen some variation in such formatting/style from LLMs, so that can't be totally reliable. Doesn't need to be, though. LLMs tend to subject dashes to a distinct flavor of abuse:

- In all the places they don't belong; nearly all can be replaced with a comma, a period, or nothing at all, with no loss to style or tone

- In few of the places they might belong, and conspicuously absent whenever there's a parenthetical phrase to offset

- Obnoxiously dramatic, excessive, and pointless

[r33b33]

Don't forget semicolon. Normal people don't use that.

[Marsymars]

I don’t know that I’d call myself normal, but I use semicolons regularly, though infrequently.

[r33b33]

If you're on hackernews, you aren't normal.

[gaws]

Semicolons are fine so long as you know how to use them.

[sharpfuryz]

Hi, ntstr! I am the author of the parent post, and it is not LLM Slop (you can use gpt detectors like zerogpt.com to check text); in fact, only the "call to action" (the last sentence) part was written by LLM, just because I thought that something was missing.

> Is this satire? or trolling? it is concerning that everyone replies to it as if there had been human thought behind this drivel. No satire, no trolling from me. Even if an evil robot wrote this comment, what's wrong with responding to it?

[Marsymars]

I didn’t notice because I unconsciously skim over slop-looking comments without evaluating whether it’s human-written or not, and only read the more interesting comments.