[jwr]

These controversies erupt regularly, and I hope that you will see a common thing with most of them: you make a decision for your users without informing them.

Please fight this hubris. Your users matter. Many of us use your tools for everyday work and do not appreciate having the rug pulled from under them on a regular basis, much less so in an underhanded and undisclosed way.

I don't mind the bugs, these will happen. What I do not appreciate is secretly changing things that are likely to decrease performance.

[Kiro]

A company that needs to anchor every single thing with the users will create a stale product.

[jwr]

That is not what I wrote. The phrases "without informing them", "in an underhanded and undisclosed way" and "secretly changing things" were important. I'm all for product evolution, but users should be informed when the product is changed, especially when the change can be for the worse (like dumbing down the model).

[salawat]

I've spent my entire working career dealing with companies that do the opposite. The product still goes stale. Find a better excuse.

You're acquiring users as a recurring revenue source. Consider stability and transparency of implementation details cost of doing business, or hemorrhage users as a result.

[tomaskafka]

While I hate all the gaslighting Anthropic seems to do recently (and the fact that their harness broke the code quality, while they forbid use of third party harnesses), making decisions for users is what UX is.

See also the difference between eg. MacOS (with large M, the older good versions) and waiting for "Year of linux on desktop".

I don't think the issue is making decisions for users, but trying to switch off the soup tap in the all-you-can-eat soup bar. Or, wrong business model setting wrong incentives to both sides.