>> 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?

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armchairhacker 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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allenu 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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troosevelt 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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grey-area 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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lbreakjai 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you want your gradation to work, the items need to be similar and progressively stronger. That's why it doesn't work. A wall is not "stronger" than a moat. "Not a fence, a rampart" would work.

Compare to the canonical example from Cyrano de Bergerac: ''Tis a rock! ... a peak! ... a cape! -- A cape, forsooth! 'Tis a peninsular!'

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Melatonic 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Isnt a moat and a wall pretty similar in function? They both keep people in or out of an area.

Also werent all "moats" commonly paired with a wall in real life? As in a moat around a castle wall?

	▲	grey-area 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In a castle for defence, yes similar in function but not form and often used together not one or the other. In business metaphors no they are used for different things and also when you create a metaphor you should stick with it, that’s what makes this jarring and weird.

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GeorgeWBasic 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"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.

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kstrauser 16 hours ago | parent [-]

It's also a VERY HUMAN way to write.

I don't care so much about Digg, but the endless "haha, I caught you!" comments annoy me more than the rare actual AI-written content they label.

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GeorgeWBasic 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Not to the same extent at all. If you use ChatGPT for a while, you'll see it writes like that very frequently. Humans do write like that sometimes, but not with anywhere the frequency that ChatGPT does it. That's weak evidence for it being ChatGPT.

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kstrauser 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Suppose ChatGPT uses a semicolon more often than an individual person. On a pageful of comments from many random people, someone using a semicolon doesn't mean they're a bot even if 100% of their comments on that page includes one.

	▲	GeorgeWBasic 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Would now be a good time to point out that I said that "It's not proof" and "weak evidence"? Because that is what I said.

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basisword 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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".

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ngokevin 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"This is not...this is" is a tell

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iamdamian 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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?)

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troosevelt 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There isn't any "this is" in that sentence.

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netsharc 17 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

	▲	17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]