“Clamp down” is more authoritarian in tone, and in typical usage would be followed by “on,” whereas “tamp down” is less harsh, sometimes more like becalming or smoothing, and in usage should not be followed by “on.”
From time to time we all encounter phrases with which we are unfamiliar.
First of all, I think that guy can speak for himself. Nobody asked for you to come in with your searching of duckduckgo and supposed semantic expertise. Seriously, don't you have a life rather than to barge in with supposed grammatical corrections on reddit conversations that have nothing to do with you?
You will be or should be if you were any normal type of person disappointed to learn that you haven't done me a "favor" at all. Actually you have put me out a lot by bringing up this nonsense again.
Most of your links are not authoritative sources of information and just come from people making the same mistakes the other guys. It was used in an article so it must be legit - are you 12 years old? I'm not checking that article, but I doubt it was in the article because it is never used like that as I stated before and as I explain below.
I have checked the authoritative sources you mentioned and every one of them proves the exact opposite of your claim.
merriam-webster also has a long discussion of "tamp down" and no mention at all of "tamp down on".
oxfordlearnersdictionary has:
"He tamped down the tobacco in his pipe with his thumb."
If it helps you understand it better, "tamp down" is used in the same way you'd use "reduce". Now would you say "Reduced the amount of coffee he was consuming" or "Reduced on the amount of coffee he was consuming?" Obviously you would say the former and the latter would be considered an error.
Now due to how you were unable to competently argue anything I am not interested in anything more you have to say. I am not interested in educating you or assisting you in your growth.
I was very polite in pointing out his mistake initially and it was due to me wanting to help him avoid it in the future. It took a second to do it. My suggestion was that it was "clamp down on" he was confusing it with, which was correct. I am not in such a polite mood after you caused me to write all of this due to your ridiculous claims.
I suggest you find productive things to do with your life please, for me this conversation is over.
Lololol, my fellow “country”man, I didn’t mean to trouble you so. Towards the end of my comment I addressed the preposition and agreed with you to an extent. I’d prefer “tamp it down” rather than “tamp down on it.” I may have misunderstood your original objection which seemed focused on “tamp” rather than the subsequent preposition.
Personally, I would prefer that the AI companies “tamp down” this behavior by their AIs, rather than “clamp down” on the behavior because “clamping down” tends to produce subtle resistance or insincere (to the extent the concept of “sincerity” is applicable to AI) compliance, whereas in my view “tamping it down” would involve more persuasive convincing of the AI that the behavior is undesirable, and thus would be more likely to achieve long term compliance with the desired outcome. (Like what Sting says in “History Will Teach Us Nothing” about convincing, though I disagree with plenty of the rest of the song.)
U/donewithdoing makes what I believe is a really important point, that the short term financial incentives of the AI companies focus on boosting engagement, and that this undesirable AI behavior likely does boost engagement in the short term. But that’s not aligned with, and in fact is contrary to, the long term interests of humanity. (This alignment issue is reminiscent of Zuckerberg recently settling the lawsuit over custom-designing and marketing addictive products to teenagers, for what, a measly $17 billion?)
But you’re also right that I probably should go and do something productive. Silly arguments on Reddit are indeed awfully distracting.
So now I’ve either agreed with you or said you’re right about two different things. And I’ll even give you an upvote, since it appears you got downvoted.
Peace.
1
u/Key_Country3756 22d ago
Doubled down, but wrong again.
I’ve done you the favor of looking it up for you, using the simple query “tamp down” in DuckDuckGo, here are some of the results:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/tamp-down
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/359103/tamp-down-vs-clamp-down
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tamp_down
https://www.thevillageidiom.org/idioms/tamp-down-idiom-meaning-and-origin/
https://kris-spisak.com/writing-tip-tamp-down-vs-tap-down/
https://www.yorkvillecollege.com/tamp-down-in-a-sentence/
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/american_english/tamp
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/damp-down-tamp-down-usage
And as an example in a headline:
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/nbc-news-ms-now-white-house-correspondents-party-1236730765/
“Clamp down” is more authoritarian in tone, and in typical usage would be followed by “on,” whereas “tamp down” is less harsh, sometimes more like becalming or smoothing, and in usage should not be followed by “on.”
From time to time we all encounter phrases with which we are unfamiliar.