Todor PetkovFeb 20
Andrew Radev

*Cory Doctorow* is using LLMs?! For *spell checking*??? https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/19/now-we-are-six/

The guy who has spent his life campaigning against the corpos is using Ollama, a model made by Facebook by training on 80 terabytes of books taken without the consent of their authors? And his reasoning as to why is because it's *slightly better* than the alternative?

> Ollama is a pretty good typo-catcher. Probably half of the "errors" it points out are false positives, which is better than the false positive rate for Google Docs' grammar-checker.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Pluralistic: Six Years of Pluralistic (19 Feb 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Feb 20 at 12:38pmWeb
Show threadAndrew RadevFeb 20

> Doubtless some of you are affronted by my modest use of an LLM.

I am.

> You think that LLMs are "fruits of the poisoned tree" and must be eschewed because they are saturated with the sin of their origins.

I think that LLMs must be eschewed for a large number of reasons, one of which is that they are made by unethical companies using incredibly unethical means, yes. Another reason is that, even in the most positive plausible reports they are only capable of producing a (highly debatable) minor improvement over previous methods of solving problems, at *massive* cost, while actively eroding problem-solving ability.

Dismissing criticism of LLMs as purity signaling is deeply bizarre.

Show threadAndrew RadevFeb 20

"Ah, but the silicon chips in your computer are immoral", I can't not use a computer in the modern world. I am incapable of functioning in society without a computer or a phone.

You can just not use The Plagiarism Machine. It's not even difficult. That's why all the corpos are throwing rainbow-colored buttons at you, because there is nothing you actually *need* it for and they have to figure out how to force it on you.

There is nothing in your life that you *have* to use an LLM for. You don't have to comply in advance.

Show threadTodor PetkovFeb 20
@AndrewRadev As Sun Tzu would say "If you stand by the river (or the waste drain in this case) long enough, you will see your idols start using LLLM/AI":(
Show threadAndrew RadevFeb 20
@tppetkov Yeah, there's been a lot of additions to my shit list recently.
Show threadTodor PetkovFeb 20
@AndrewRadev Time to add "Not interested in working with AI. If your company demands from employees to use AI in daily work, don't contact me" to my CV..