HACKER Q&A
📣 amichail

Why is bad grammar tolerated on social media given recent AI advances?


Shouldn't people without flawless grammar be required to use an AI to check their grammar?


  👤 dave4420 Accepted Answer ✓
What’s so bad about bad grammar?

Sure, I’d prefer it if people didn’t use bad grammar, but here are some things that are higher priority:

- keeping spam off the platform

- keeping harassment off the platform

- keeping porn off the platform (unless you’re a porn social network, I guess, in which case you need to keep child porn off your platform, which in context is a harder problem)

- keeping sock puppets / psychops / etc off the platform

Also, I wouldn’t like it if people were prevented from posting due to bad grammar, and I wouldn’t like it if people were forced to rewrite their posts because of bad grammar. If people want to opt in to having their grammar corrected, then great, but don’t force it on them.


👤 getwiththeprog
Grammar changes over time and is an expression of peoples place and background. Hence there is no 'true' grammar. Just like in programming languages, correctness is based on the language. To attempt to control grammar and expression is an attempt to marginalize and disinherit the 'other'. New communities on the internet have raised and used their own forms of expression and grammar from the earliest days. It serves to know who is in your group and what ones background is.

👤 billybuckwheat
Should people without flawless grammar be required to use AI to check their grammar before speaking? Using proper grammar is all well and good but being a hard nosed grammar cop? Get real. Either let it slide or stop using social media.

👤 caekislove
Bad grammar helps let me know I'm talking to a human rather than a LLM

👤 mattl
Nobody should be required to use an AI for anything, ever. People who think that's a good idea should probably be ignored.

👤 DamonHD
lolz - grammar and protocols appropriate to the forum m'lud

  - not e.e.cummings

👤 drweevil
No. Why squelch a person's individuality? And with Clippy on steroids, of all things.

👤 talldayo
> be required

By who?