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It’s unacceptable for a tool to sacrifice an iota of clarity, coherence, meaning, quality, etc. for the purpose of embedding hidden clues within the text to suggest its provenance. daringfireball.net/2026/08/anthro…

daringfireball.netAnthropic’s ‘Watermark’ Text Adulteration in Claude Is a Perversion of WritingIt’s unacceptable for a tool to sacrifice an iota of clarity, coherence, meaning, quality, etc. for the purpose of embedding hidden clues within the text to suggest its provenance. The idea that anything other than *my* needs should factor into the generation of text *for me* is patently offensive.

Shane Glackin

@eltorosolo.bsky.social

18 Aug

I mean this in the kindest possible way; this is an almost unimaginably bad take.

John Gruber

@gruber.foo

19 Aug

No need to be kind. Explain why.

Shane Glackin

@eltorosolo.bsky.social

19 Aug

Because apart from botching all the technical details, your objections apply to *all* LLM "writing", not to watermarked writing in particular.

Shane Glackin

@eltorosolo.bsky.social

19 Aug

Meant to thread this here; bsky.app/profile/elto...

Shane Glackin@eltorosolo.bsky.social

"Sacrificing clarity, coherence, meaning, quality" etc. is in the sense described inherent to prompting an LLM, and not in any way added to by the watermarking process. You do not have more control as the end user over a RNG than a PRNG.

Shane Glackin

@eltorosolo.bsky.social

19 Aug

"Botching all the technical details" is not really fair, looking at it again. Apologies. We're potty-training at the moment, and I have flu, and judging the energy and emotion of the moment comes less easily than usual.

John Gruber

@gruber.foo

Not sure which to wish you more luck with, the potty-training or the flu, but I wish you luck with both. (I want to say the flu is worse, but I went through parental potty-training 20 years ago and I remember it more vividly than the last time I had the flu.)

19/8/26, 8:00 pm0 reposts1 like

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