(Not sure if this should go into Tool Suggestions or just Site Development, feel free to let me know)
I find LanguageTool’s marketing and presentation to be really similar to Canary Mail’s, and I would like LanguageTool to be removed just as much.
Paraphrasing feature sends some text to AI, and I don’t think they’re using something like Apple’s Private Cloud Compute
Privacy policy outright states they participate in surveillance ****ism and use Google Analytics, so even if most text isn’t stored, metadata is still tracked Privacy Policy - LanguageTool
Even if they say they don’t store most inputted text, this makes it really hard to trust them.
If self hosting became the only way that this tool is recommended, maybe the Language Tool section could be lumped in with Office Suites to become something like Office Tools.
I’m surprised nobody commented on this. I have been using LT for years, before it was even recommended by some people in the privacy community. Even if you take AI out of the equation, I have always been disturbed by the fact that spellchecking apps, especially those that require an account, can read everything you type. The only reason I use LT is because I feel like I have no choice. This is why I am rooting for Proton Scribe to succeed. IMO, they should combine it with Standard Notes, but also make it available as a standalone app for spellchecking.
Yeah I’m not sure we necessarily need a slightly better version of grammarly. We shouldn’t be asking people to send all their text to some service. Now especially you have local AI models that can be used for grammar checking also which I don’t think was really the case when it was added. Most programs where you’re inputting text also come with a spellchecker by default as well. Overall I think it’s minimally useful and only getting less compelling as local AI models get better.
They also have a bunch of extensions they want you to install which I don’t want to encourage.