Fabricated precision
- Id
- fabricated-precision
- Status
- Active
- Severity
- high
- Detection
- judge
- Evidence grade
- feedsquad-observed
- Languages
- en
- Added
- 2026-08-15
- Updated
- 2026-08-15
Currently signals low-effort writing.
What it is
A number with a decimal point and no parent. It carries the impression of measurement without any of the apparatus: no sample, no method, no date, no owner. Trace it and you find another article that also does not say.
Why it reads as machine-made
Precision is a style before it is a measurement, and the style is cheaper. A figure like 47 percent reads as researched in a way that most reads as guessed, so the generated sentence reaches for the first. Our own folklore register is full of this: the platform-update figures that circulate about reach penalties and detection accuracy resolve, one after another, to vendor and marketing posts citing each other, and none of them appears in any first-party platform document. No external taxonomy in our source set names this as a pattern, so the entry rests on our own corpus and says so.
Specimens
Posts published on Tuesday mornings see 31.4 percent more engagement, and the ranking system weights them 2.3 times higher during the first hour.
Our Tuesday morning posts did better than our Thursday ones across eleven weeks: median 41 reactions against 26. We do not know why. We have no access to how the ranking works, so the second half of that sentence would have been a guess and is not here.
Figures in both versions are invented for this specimen. The first version's problem is that its numbers have no parent. The second version's numbers are ours and carry the counting method with them.
How it is detected
- Rubric
- Task: decide which numbers in the text have anything behind them. Step 1. List every numeric claim about the world. Exclude dates, list numbering, prices of things the text is selling, and quantities the reader can see for themselves. Step 2. For each, record four things: a source, a sample or population, a date or date range, a method. Mark each present or absent. Step 3. Note the precision. A decimal place, or a percentage stated more finely than five points, is a claim to measurement. Escape hatches: numbers the text marks as illustrative, hypothetical or rounded; constants a reader can look up, such as a tax rate or a physical value; figures inside a quotation attributed to a named speaker; the author's own numbers where the counting method is described, which is the repair this entry asks for; ranges given as ranges. Decision. FLAG when two or more precise figures have none of the four supports. WEAK on one. PASS when numbers are rounded, sourced or owned. Precision without support is the trigger. The presence of numbers is not. Output: each figure, its four marks, and the verdict. Where a figure is unsupported, the correct next action is to ask the writer for the source, not to conclude anything about how the text was produced.
Who writes this way legitimately
Real numbers get lazy citation all the time. A writer who read a study last year and remembers the figure but not the reference produces a sentence indistinguishable from an invented one, and so does a journalist working from a briefing under embargo, an analyst quoting an internal dashboard they cannot link, and anyone summarising their own unpublished work. Trade publications routinely strip citations for readability. The first move on an unsupported figure is therefore to ask where it came from, because roughly half the time there is an answer. A number that survives one round of asking is fine. A number whose trail ends in another article that also does not say is the pattern this entry describes.
Model attribution
None available. The figures we traced circulate through marketing and vendor posts, and where a model produced one first is not knowable from the artifacts we hold.
Status history
| Date | Status | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-15 | Active | Our own corpus only. During the research pass for this index, widely repeated platform-performance figures were traced back and every one of them ended at a vendor or marketing post rather than at a first-party document. No external taxonomy names the pattern, which is why the grade is feedsquad-observed. |
Sources
- 01AI Tells Index folklore registerfeedsquad-observedobserved 2026-08-14
Widely circulated claims about platform ranking penalties, reach effects and detection accuracy, traced back to primary sources during the research pass for this index. The fabricated platform-update figures are the type specimen: each resolves to vendor and marketing posts citing one another, and none appears in any first-party platform document.
CC BY 4.0 / The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells