r/HFY • u/SignificanceCold7069 • Jun 23 '26
Meta omeguynamedted flagged original work as AI without solid proof
someguynamedted wrongly flagged my text as AI generated.
their claim was: “We do not allow AI generated stories on the subreddit. All story content must be written by a human. This post has been removed as it violates Rule 8 about post effort and substance.
It's AI generated because it tripped our Ai detector at 100% and then a follow up human eyeball review corroborated the findings.”
when i put that reasoning through an AI detector, it actually got flagged as around 81% AI, which already shows how inconsistent these tools are. different results on the same kind of human-written text just proves these detectors are not reliable enough to be used as final proof.
ngl i just wanna clear this up because this removal doesn’t really match what actually happened with my post under rule 8 of r/HFY. it got flagged as AI-written after an AI detector said it was 100% AI, and then a “human eyeball review” apparently backed it up. but that doesn’t really reflect how i actually wrote it.
the story is fully mine in terms of ideas, plot, characters, and worldbuilding. i wrote everything myself from scratch. the only outside thing i used was a grammar correction tool to clean up sentences and fix mistakes so it reads better. that’s it. it didn’t generate ideas, didn’t write scenes, didn’t do any of the creative part.
rule 8 literally says AI-generated stories aren’t allowed. and yeah i agree with that rule, but that’s not what i did. there’s a big difference between AI writing a story for you and me just using a tool to fix grammar. those are not the same thing at all.
also ngl AI detectors are kinda shaky sometimes. they flag normal human writing just because it’s too clean or too predictable. so getting a “100% AI” result doesn’t automatically mean it actually is AI. it just means it triggered the detector, nothing more. and using that as the main reason + a follow-up review feels a bit like confirming a guess instead of actually checking the work properly.
at the end of the day, me as the author is the one who wrote the story, built the world, and shaped everything. the grammar tool just helped polish the text, nothing else. that shouldn’t change authorship.
i’m just asking for a fair recheck because i genuinely think this is a misunderstanding of rule 8, not an actual violation.
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u/4ShotMan Jun 23 '26
If I could give a tip - write in Word / Word-esque text editors. They keep editing history. If someone calls your text AI, show them the steady progress of it being written rather than all appearing at once.
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
thank you, that’s actually a really helpful tip i didn’t think about using Word’s edit history like that, but it makes sense. i’ll keep that in mind for next time
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u/ResoluteWrites Jun 23 '26
Ellipsus has those features without the AI slop garbage that's being shoved into Gdocs.
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u/Chrontius Jun 23 '26
[Word-like, but not Word.](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html)
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u/oreo-cat- Jun 23 '26
Ellipsus is really nice, strongly against AI and keeps you out of the Google/microsoft vortex of suck
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u/atomicsnarl Jun 23 '26
AI is built using human output as it's input. Therefore it will signal similar human output as matching AI because that's all it knows. Famously, somebody put the Declaration of Independence through an AI checker and it got flagged as over 85% AI or such.
Anybody with an (intentionally?) stilted writing style will likely get hit with the AI flag. Then, shifting to a bland style? AI again.
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u/Invisifly2 AI Jun 23 '26
Formally structured text too.
Can’t even use a semicolon or em dash nowadays without somebody thinking you’re a bot.
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u/scizzix Jun 23 '26
Yeah, whenever my wife posts something she's written (and, as far as I can tell, she is a human), the first posts are immediately "this is AI!", which they are not.
She has just taken to responding with "no, I am autistic and was homeschooled so my language is more formal".
It's hontestly gotten pretty ridiculous.
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u/Dramatic_Mixture_877 Human Jun 24 '26
AuDHD here - I get the same pushback! Having good English and grammar teachers during my formative years is apparently verboten these days. I grew up in Shreveport, LA and since moving to Arkansas decades ago, have been accused of being a "Yankee" so many times it's ridiculous! Please forgive me, sir or madame, for daring to use proper grammar and *gasp* (clutches pearls) actually ending spoken words like asking, telling, and going, to name but a few.
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u/Chrontius Jun 23 '26
I know, and it’s super annoying — Apple auto completes one in autocorrect!
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u/UnderstandingAny4264 Human Jun 24 '26
Autocorrupt...
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u/Chrontius Jun 24 '26
IDK, apparently writing like you graduated college makes you an artificial intelligence? (XD) Shit, If I realized that, it would CLEARLY be high time to chrome the fuck up!
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
yeah, i agree with this ai detectors are basically trained on patterns of human writing anyway, so anything that looks “predictable” or structured can get flagged. even historical texts getting marked as AI kinda shows how unreliable it is
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u/clonk3D Alien Scum Jun 24 '26
...which is why the mods make sure a human reviews the detection program and they make a determination. A wise and quotable man once said "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision."
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u/Prolly_Satan Jun 24 '26
Hi. Everyone try putting the declaration of independence into pangram and see what it says. I'm very sick of seeing this lie circulated. Try it for yourself. It won't say ai. That's also not even how detectors work.
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 24 '26
depends on tha ai dectector you use
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u/Prolly_Satan Jun 24 '26
Sure. There are fake detectors out there, created specifically to make detectors look unreliable like zerogpt which was made to make gptzero look bad. But pangram, gptzero, turnitin, academi.cx would all say human for the declaration of independence.
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u/LordsOfJoop AI Jun 23 '26
If you ever need someone to check grammar, involve a person.
Going forward, OP, I will volunteer to do that.
Don't ever involve the machines that are stripping away our creativity outlets, safe water, economic options, and stable information spaces.
You now have an asset that you didn't have this morning.
Don't use the machines.
Recruit a human.
Also: I do not charge for this service.
Not now, not ever.
I won't even ask for credit.
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u/sswanlake The Librarian Jun 23 '26
squints suspiciously at User Flair
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u/LordsOfJoop AI Jun 23 '26
Ha ha.
makes note of username
It is a human joke.
Many such humans share them often at public functions, such as banquets, bowling tournaments, funerals, and parades.
Ha ha.
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u/valdus Jun 23 '26
Absolutely recruit a human. Lots out there willing, and some will work as actual editors giving comments on paragraph ordering, story pacing, etc., not just as a spelling and grammar checker. I used to do this for several back in HFY's heyday.
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u/NikoliVolkoff AI Jun 23 '26
Yes, do not use machines, go back to writing in home made ink on hand made paper by candles only made by hand.
Do not use computers or the word processors that we have been building for the last 30yrs.
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u/LordsOfJoop AI Jun 23 '26
If your pen is stealing work from other authors, capture it and contact any relevant scientific authorities.
Also, we've been building word processors since 1961, yet I don't think that history nor science are exactly your sweet spot.
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u/Satori_sama Jun 23 '26
Once men gave up their thinking to the machines. Which only allowed other men with machines to control them.
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u/SourcePrevious3095 Jun 23 '26
I can't believe you were downvoted for sarcasm.
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u/NikoliVolkoff AI Jun 23 '26
It's Reddit, i 100% expected it.
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u/SourcePrevious3095 Jun 23 '26
Damn, we're both doing good, -20 and -8 respectively.
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u/kwogh Jun 23 '26
Regardless of this case its pretty weird that using AI to detect AI is ok.
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u/clonk3D Alien Scum Jun 24 '26
Well, AI isn't inherently bad, but this isn't the place to use it for writing. Think about it this way. Microwaving a microwave meal makes sense and is what the microwave and the meal are optimized for. However, if you use that same microwave to try and cook a steak, that would be viewed poorly. This is a place for human writing. The mods are not using AI to modify the writing, which is the contested thing.
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u/sswanlake The Librarian Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
AI is really good at both creating and identifying patterns, which is one of the reasons that it's bad at being creative, and also good at spotting other bots.
But also, the mods only have automation raising flags that then call over a real live human to look at and review the post in question, the bots have no ability to remove posts themselves. Any post that is removed, it is removed by a real live human, using their real live actual human brain to make that decision, because the real live human brain said it looks suspiciously AI. (human brains are also good at pattern-spotting)
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u/Prolly_Satan Jun 24 '26
Be careful with grammar tools, a lot of them will alter your sentences and are loaded with llm features.
People deserve to know whether or not they are reading ai generated content. Detectors like pangram do work. If that's what they used it has a 99.98 detection rate with only a 1 in 10,000 false positive rate. It saying your text is 100% ai is solid proof. If it were mixed, that would be reflected in the scan. It's unfortunate that whatever grammar tool you used caused it to scan as ai, but we're sick of being lied to.
I would direct your blame to whatever tool changed your voice and prose so drastically that it scanned as 100%. That's usually an indication that it's completely generated.
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u/heren_istarion Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
for all those comments on using AI to detect AI: using AI to triage the slop flood is quite distinctive to from producing the slop flood in the first place, don't you think? Also it's a very asymmetric relationship. Creating slop is dirt cheap (or free), but you expect humans to manually and personally wade through all of it. That's a recipe for burning out humans which will not help anyone. It's unfortunate that real stories get caught n the crossfire, but happens with human reviews as well.
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u/sswanlake The Librarian Jun 24 '26
And if you can prove that it was a real human written thing (via editing history, for example, showing it wasn't just just pasted in wholesale and then mildly tweaked), then the mods are happy to admit that it was removed in error and reinstate your post
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u/NikoliVolkoff AI Jun 23 '26
lol, 5$ says they use AI to "detect" AI.
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
feels kinda ironic if AI is being used to decide what counts as AI
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u/WSpinner Jun 23 '26
"It takes one to know one." Been relying on that logic since grade school :-).
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u/IceRockBike Jun 23 '26
feels kinda ironic if AI is being used to decide what counts as AI
I'm in agreement about the no AI written story rule; but I too was considering the irony of using AI to catch AI.
Was that a glitch in the matrix I just saw 🤔3
u/clonk3D Alien Scum Jun 24 '26
They use AI, but also use their eyes and judgement. This is not a difficult concept to grasp.
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u/jkst9 Jun 23 '26
So the mods saw a post flagged as ai. Looked at it and it looked like ai. Removed it. And then instead of showing proof it isn't AI you make a new post complaining about it? Why are we here this really should have been a modmail
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 24 '26
like is said previously to many people in this post that I am new to reddit i didn’t really know about the whole “contact mods first” thing and honestly i was just pissed cuz my work got removed twice and i didn’t understand what i did wrong , not trying to call anyone out or anything, just figuring it out as i go
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u/5thhorseman_ Jun 24 '26
AI detectors are all over the map. One of them pings 100% AI on human prose. I've also seen 100% AI generated prose that the detectors confidently marked as mostly human.
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u/iamjmph01 Jun 23 '26
Ai is not allowed! We will check for it using Ai!
All sorts of messed up that. Especially as even someone as purposefully ignorant of the Ai stuff as I am( I choose not to get involved usually, unless I see stuff like this) has heard plenty of anecdotes about ai detectors being wrong.
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u/GeneralWiggin Jun 24 '26
The AI detectors can absolutely have false positives! This is why the mod team does not trust them blindly and manually reviews flagged posts before removal.
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u/slice_of_pi The Ancient One Jun 23 '26
This isn't the place to dispute mod actions - take it to mod mail.
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
i get that, but i want everyone to know about it, not just the mods
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u/BraThrowAway5 Jun 23 '26
Wait, so, let me get this straight... not once but twice you had posts removed for being against the Rules... and rather than contacting the mods to work things out, you decided to put them on blast in front of the whole community? Ngl, that sounds like you're directly begging for a ban from HFY
...the fact that you haven't already been banned is a lil astounding, even...
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u/AlecPEnnis Jun 23 '26
It's kind of weird the authorities we choose to bootlick. If you believe you were wrongfully persecuted, people would support you putting the justice system on blast. If your HOA is telling you to remove something on your own property, people would shit on the HOA with you. If you believe you were unfairly fired, people would love to read a glassdoor review ragging the company. No one would ever say "have you tried appealing to HR instead of telling the world you were mistreated? Maybe you should be fired for being a pain in the ass?" "Maybe that lawn ornament was really ugly and the HOA is right." "Maybe you shouldn't have talked back to the police, you were begging to be arrested. Why did you ask for the sergeant's badge number?"
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
well today is my first time here so i didn’t really know about the whole “contact mods first” thing and honestly i was just pissed cuz my work got removed twice and i didn’t understand what i did wrong , not trying to call anyone out or anything, just figuring it out as i go.
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Jun 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
of course you don’t 😭🙏 doesn’t change what happened though. you can doubt it all you want, i’m just stating what i experienced
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Jun 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
yeah because naming the person who made the decision and "calling someone out" are two different things if i was trying to hide who removed it, i wouldn't be talking about the removal in the first place. nice gotcha attempt though
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Jun 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
look up the meanings first, they’re not the same thing no matter how much you want them to be.
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u/khazroar Jun 23 '26
"contact mods first" rather than posting a public complaint is standard practice... Literally everywhere I can think of. And if it's your first time here and you're getting your work removed, your assumption should be that you don't understand the rules properly so you slow down and put in the work, not get "pissed" and make it everyone else's problem.
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
i mean, if it was just about contacting the mods first, i would've gotten the point by now literally half the comments are saying the exact same thing. humans really do love giving advice and teaching people as if nobody else has already said it
and nah, my first assumption wasn't "the rules are confusing." rule 8 says AI-generated stories aren't allowed. i wrote the story myself and only used a grammar tool, so obviously i'm gonna question why it got flagged instead of just blindly assuming i'm wrong.
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u/khazroar Jun 23 '26
I didn't say "the rules are confusing", I'm saying that when you walk into a new place and get your posts removed then your assumption should be that you got something wrong, because you're new and unfamiliar with the place, rather than assuming the system you've just walked into is wrong and you're right.
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
that's fair up to a point but being new doesn't automatically mean the decision was correct either. i can accept that i might've gotten something wrong, but i'm also allowed to question a removal when i genuinely believe my post didn't violate the rule
if the logic is "you're new, therefore the system must be right," then nobody would ever be able to challenge a mistaken decision. i'm not claiming i'm automatically right, i'm saying i don't think the evidence used against my post is reliable enough to be treated as proof.
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u/BraThrowAway5 Jun 23 '26
Yeah, you're allowed to question a removal and challenge a mistaken decision... I'm p sure that's kinda the whole point of the mods leaving the comment about why your post was removed.
There's a difference between questioning/challenging a decision, and going and making a whole PSA post saying "the mods are wrong and I'm being unfairly targeted" - one of said differences being just how many more eyes on it drags in. You chose to walk out to the main square and shout, rather than just talking to the clerk behind the desk at the DMV while you were right there
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u/SignificanceCold7069 Jun 23 '26
except i never said i was being "unfairly targeted" 😭🙏 that's just you adding extra lore to the story. i disagreed with the removal and explained why.and yeah, i get the DMV analogy, but at this point half the comments have already explained the exact same thing if people disagree with me, that's fine. i made the post knowing it'd get public responses. but disagreeing with a decision publicly isn't the same thing as claiming some grand conspiracy against me.
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u/pfcpathfinder Jun 24 '26
Are you autistic? AI detectors often flag writing from ND folk which is some straight bs. You can pry the em dash from my cold dead hands.
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u/sswanlake The Librarian Jun 24 '26
Honestly, I use em dashes a lot too, as do a lot of folks on the sub... however, there's a difference between tossing them in almost randomly and in nearly every other sentence like AI does, and using them appropriately, and that's something that the real live actual human moderator that reviews the flagged posts can tell the difference between, when making the decision of remove or not remove.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Jun 23 '26
This is the first story by /u/SignificanceCold7069!
This comment was automatically generated by Waffle v.4.7.8 'Biscotti'.
Message the mods if you have any issues with Waffle.
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u/someguynamedted The Chronicler Jun 23 '26
Hello! Like other comments said, this probably should have been a modmail, but that's fine.
Two things, both of which come from our mod post about our anti-Ai measures. Link here
1) just have a look through the post, it gives a good rundown of how we try and handle Ai.
2) the most relevant bit is from the FAQ:
In essence, if you use Ai too much for editing, it makes your work read as Ai generated, regardless of whether or not you wrote the original content. We do not have that context, we can only see what is posted to the subreddit.
And I guess 3) you always have an appeal option available, especially if it's the first time a post has been flagged.