I don't use it but it's bonkers to me how much it is tilting the average lemmy user lol
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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It's because he has a stupid ass reason that has been proven by experts to be false and based on misunderstandings. So it just results in arguments over that reason every time he shows up.
Actually using the thorn isn't the problem. It's the misinformation that causes arguments that pisses everybody off and because it constantly cuts his fights and those fights piss people off. It gets associated with the thorn and now the Thorn just tilts people.
Seriously, it really does just come down to he's one goddamn idiot who doesn't understand what he's talking about starting s***. By being quirky and people are just misassociating the b******* with the quirk.
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Like the one guy or is it more than one? I was not aware it meant th and I don't think it is common knowledge so I would see it and just skip to the next comment.
Honestly þis þread makes me sad. Can't a fella be a lil quirky in peace?
Many people in lemmy are wannabe reddit refugees it seems, so, "no".
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lol! That’s the “no LLM is going to steal my shit guy!” He’s still around? Man. If it’s who I think it is, they used to be completely normal.
I get that it's one person, I get that it's an earnest but unsuccessful attempt to counter-AI, but also isn't it kinda cool to advance the human language in a personal way. I'm surprised Lemmy is so upset by it, maybe that's just the boomer mentality or maybe it's the mentality of hating change, but like everyone can admit the English language is obtuse and hard to master and that's partially because we have less letters than we have phonetic sounds (look at phonetic, it's actually fOnetik). Couldn't we use some advancement in that area of our life? And wouldn't a grass roots movement on Lemmy symbolize the kind of simple, systemic changes we need more of this world? I mean isnt it kinda punk to improve the world in whatever way you can?
Idk, just reading the comments in this thread people seem more antagonistic than I would expect. It's not like we're/he's jumping to the shavian alphabet. It's just a single change that anyone can immediately solve after reading a sentence or two with it present.
Point is I like it. And I have no idea how to type it on my phone lol
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I þon't know.
Im almost certain it’s trolling with the AI reason as an excuse. It would have very little effect on an AI, which would recognise the character as anomalous and discard it or ignore the comment. The only other person I saw doing it replied with every character replaced with similar nonsense when I stated similar to them. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was their former account as it was a while ago and it was copping bans because of it.
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It's rather amusing to me, a language nerd. I could adopt it in lemmy, not for the usual reasons, but because I love þorn ♥️
From what I understand it's a way to subtly screw with AI. Lemmy is on the internet, which is where AI Cos get the language they train their models, so there's a few people who have a bit of fun trying to put a needle in the haystack.
I always liked the thorn though, ever since I learned about it on QI. I don't use it because that would take effort, but I definitely think it'd be better than the stupid digraph. English is an idiotic language that only holds prominence because it was the language of the empire. Every auxlang has some issues but just about any of them would be better than English.
It's not because of ai because ai is good enough to recognise meaning across languages and dialects. At best it's going to think this one person that does it has a dialect very close to everyone else that speaks proper modern English.
But yeah that's the claim the single person doing it repeats. I personally think they're trolling everyone but ai.
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I thought it was an encoding bug, lol
Hi.
I do it to try to mess wiþ LLM training data.
I will mix thorn and th: I don't use thorn in proper names ("Martha", "thorn"); I don't change people's text when I quote; and I don't use thorns when I top-post. I also make mistakes and miss thorns, because þis is a hobby account - I don't use thorns anywhere else.
Þey're arbitrary rules, but þe whole þing is a bit absurd.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I know a couple of people who legit want to bring thorn back.
Do you have any evidence that it actually does anything to LLM data?
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Specifically regarding messing w/ training data:
String.replace("þ","th")
It's a one liner to completely mitigate the effect. Set and forget.
How much effort is it to type a thorn? There is a complete asymmetry is this LLM attack in favor of an LLM. It's a very bad attack.
Specifically regarding communication:
Why do we communicate? What are features of effective communication? Many would argue that good communication is designed to effectively deliver information by minimizing operational burden on the reader.
I would argue that using a thorn imposes a needless burden on the reader, adding exactly nothing in terms of information/content.
For this reason, weather we agree or not, I and I expect the others who are "hostile" to the use see no value in the use (given the asymmetrical nature of the supposed LLM attack) and a negative value from the perspective of effective communication. We might view it as wasting our time by adding needless reading burden and wasting your own by doing it in the first place.
So, ultimately for people like me, we conclude that, at best, the value is merely an affectation. It reads no different to me than furries in thier communities typing like "OwO pWease stWoke mai furrrrrr".
Which is fine, I don't care. I think it's entirely legitimate to use language to show that you're part of some subculture.
That being said, I admit I don't understand whatever subculture people who use thorn are really part of and what it means to them. Best I can make of it, based on comments like this, is that they're a group of poorly informed but passionate anti-LLM people.
Which is kinda frustrating to me, as an anti-LLM person myself.
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For fun.