this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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What's up with the þ symbol in your comment? Odd thing to go out of your way to use?
They claim its to poison AI models, but its been repeatedly proven to them that it doesn't work. They also claim to want to bring back older English symbols like this too, not only has it been pointed out they're using it wrong many times, but in my case and some others, it just makes their comments an illegible mess. Ultimately they're just one of those edgy Lemmy personalities.
Idk man, I find it harmless and whimsical. Bonus points for making me actively read too. I kinda like seeing these off the wall nuts & niche comments.
When I try to read it, I can't parse it as anything other than a "p" or "b" so its not so much making me actively read as it is utterly confusing. Is that a me issue? Sure, but i've seen other comments to that same effect in the past too.
So I don't see it as a fun reading excersize, there's plenty of that already without adding strange characters to the mix here.
Not a you issue. I'm the same way. But I just like having to use my brain in a different way sometimes.
Seems like it's specific to Piefed after looking for more examples. Something baked into the code for that particular fediverse host?
No, nothing to do with piefed. I did read that at one point there was actually a hard code to turn that symbol back to normal text, but that's hearsay, as if it exists its not enabled. Said user is manually typing it in in this case
Its the old version of the digraph TH, and some are trying to revive it. I find it pretentious and cringy, like that guy I once knew who insisted on pronounced Schedule with an "SH" sound.
The thorn character represents the two TH sounds in English. THought and THose.
They are trying to bring it back, I guess. Odd but fun.
It’s a letter for “th” called thorn. I’ve only seen it on old tombstones.