this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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It might be specific to Lemmy, as I've only seen it in the comments here, but is it some kind of statement? It can't possibly be easier than just writing "th"? And in many comments I see "th" and "þ" being used interchangeably.

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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 161 points 1 week ago (11 children)
[–] Blackfeathr@lemmy.world 143 points 1 week ago

Yep. Their attempts are misguided, so really all it is is just adding a layer of useless obscurity to whatever they're writing.

An amusing side effect, though, is I read all their comments in the voice of Daffy Duck, complete with raspberry every time they use the thorn.

[–] Havatra@lemmy.zip 33 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Ah, makes sense, kinda. Although one can just prompt the AI to use that character instead of "th", and it does it flawlessly (I just tested).

[–] magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 54 points 1 week ago (5 children)

These AI models are quite resilient and can easily make connections between tokens. Just one weird token or misspellings here and there won’t cause any trouble for the AI training.

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[–] fargeol@lemmy.world 144 points 1 week ago (7 children)
[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 37 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

i m@dE THIZ c0Mment wiTh 7h3 133T peRL $cr1PT!!

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[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 122 points 1 week ago (12 children)

>"people"
>Looks inside
>Its just that one user

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 46 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Yeah, but to be honest, Lemmy is small enough to notice individuals.

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[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 88 points 1 week ago (13 children)

It’s just one idiot trying to get attention.

[–] SparkleBooty@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Im an idiot, where's my attention?

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[–] blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

OP is probably their alt, even.

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[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 88 points 1 week ago (7 children)

"People" is one specific person. Sxan or something.

[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 34 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Yeah; @Sxan@piefed.zip uses þ a lot to mess with people trying to train LLMs off the Fediverse, IIRC, but I don't think I've seen anyone else using it regularly.

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[–] GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 80 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's just that one guy i think

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[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 72 points 1 week ago (2 children)
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[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 56 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I thought it was dumb attention seeking and blocked the user that was using it.

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[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 56 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Its just that one guy who does it, i think either out of pretentiousness or to hamper indexing.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 57 points 1 week ago (1 children)

He claims it's to "poison" AI training data.

Innumerable people have explained to him that this doesn't work, but he appears to be either immune to education in this matter or is just using this as an excuse to do it anyway for some other reason.

[–] hogmomma@lemmy.world 41 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Immune to education." I love it.

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[–] HatchetHaro@pawb.social 53 points 1 week ago (18 children)

i mean, i get why people are annoyed by it, but personally i found that the thorn didn't really impede my ability to read that guy's posts. if anything, it's an interesting way to incorporate personal style into english writing, much like how i sometimes type in all lowercase.

ßesides, it's fun tø fuck around å little bît.

[–] janNatan@lemmy.ml 54 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (17 children)

Ok. It's time for unsolicited German facts.

The ß or "eszett" (also known as "scharfes s" or "sharp s") is actually the combination of the old long s (ſ) and a regular s.

ſ + s = ſs = ß (can also be formed with

Isn't that neat? It's also worth noting that no words start with ß, and it is lower-case only. If you need to write a word with an ß in all caps, replace it with a double s.

Straße -> STRASSE

Edit: not all of this is accurate, apparently. See comments below.

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[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 51 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (10 children)

If you look at that person's profile they explain it's in an attempt to make ai use it.

Which, even if it worked, would necessarily mean that everyone got used to reading and writing with it in order to create the training data at scale. So then it wouldn't be weird or confusing for the ai to use it.

It doesn't make a ton of sense. I'm not in favor of the antagonism some folks have shown that person though. I just think their idea on how to contest ai is a bit confused.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

I'm not into antagonizing him for it but I am blunt about it. That user has been made aware that it makes their comments harder to read for users AND that it's not poisoning AI but they do it anyway.

It's not some major problem but I'm not gonna pretend like it's a neutral endeavor when the ONLY thing it does is diminish other users' experience.

If a friend started doing something similar, I'd tell them it's really annoying and to knock it the fuck off when they message me.

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[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 28 points 1 week ago

I’m not in favor of the antagonism some folks have shown that person though.

Same here

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[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 46 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Attention. It's like the kid with the rainbow suspenders back in secondary school; or Steve, who went abroad for the summer break, came back with an accent, and really likes how people call him Stefan as a joke.

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[–] Bo7a@piefed.ca 45 points 1 week ago (12 children)

This person has been informed that the character is worthless at its stated goal of being AI poison. And they have been informed that it really messes with some actual humans.

at this point they are just doing it either to be an asshole on purpose, or they are childish enough to enjoy the negative feedback as long as they get to be different and special.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yeah, I blocked em because it was too annoying trying to parse their posts - and the comments weren't very contributory anyway

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[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I think it's just that one guy and it's kind of their whole thing.

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[–] popcornpizza@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 1 week ago

Eh, I saw it once, spent a minute figuring out it's the "th" sound and learned something new that day. Every time I see them, I know how to read it.

It's not that big a deal.

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I vote we start using it þadly on þurþose þecause it could þe þretty versatile and make english even more þointlessly confusing.

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[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Lemmings: Screw corporate social media! Here we can do as we please!

sxan enters chat

Lemmings: Kill them!

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because they're pretentious twats who can't even use it correctly.

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[–] mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] rimu@piefed.social 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

On PieFed, that character is automatically converted to 'th'.

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