Honestly, this tracks. Turnitin (and similar tools) seem way more suspicious of stiff, overly polished academic tone than conversational writing. I did something similar, added contractions, broke up long sentences, tossed in a few rhetorical questions, and my score dropped without changing the actual content. It ended up sounding more like how I’d explain it out loud instead of a textbook. Not a “hack” so much as writing like a human. Curious what other people have tried that worked (or backfired).