[JimDabell]

OpenAI also has this kind of check. What is especially bad is that if you fail the verification process, they won’t let you retry – you are permanently locked out from the top models. They aren’t clear about this upfront during the process, so make sure the lighting is good when you scan your ID!

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10910291-api-organizatio...

[trashface]

Yep this is what caused me to switch to Anthropic from OpenAI a few months back, couldn't use any model newer than GPT-4 even if I paid for credits, unless I did a biometric check. I guess I'll move to perplexity or deepseek or something if anthropic flags me for the same.

[halJordan]

That's almost certainly just bad engineering/bad business. Not to say it wasn't an active choice, I'm sure it was. It just shows how extreme the power imbalance is between end users and big business that they have 0 desire to do things correctly and end users have 0 impact on correcting that thinking.

[bathory]

Anthropic claim that if you have a verification issue, they will give you support; remains to be seen what that will actually come down to

[maxloh]

That is a really terrible design.

I dealt with a few instances of online ID verification recently, and in my experience, they don't close your application when your photo is not clear. They mark it as "awaiting customer response" and kindly ask you to upload again.

[inigyou]

Or make a new account?

[JimDabell]

The whole point of an identity check is that they know exactly who you are. If you tell them who you are and you fail the identity check, you can’t simply create a new account because when you go through the identity check for a second time you’ll still need to tell them exactly who you are, at which point they can match the new account to the original failure.

[polack]

So I’ll just automate failed verifications for everyone I want to lock out?

[handoflixue]

An empty account and an account with a year of history have very different weights in this - most people already have an account tied to their legal name, paid for with a credit card in that same legal name. Throw in some geo-location, browser fingerprinting, etc. to disambiguate the surprisingly rare case of two customers with the exact same name.

For a paid product, it's really not that hard to already have a fairly solid idea of what's going on - this just ensures that a responsible adult has gone through a clear process of signing off on the identity for this specific service, rather than a kid with their parent's credit card.

[inigyou]

If I told them who I was and then failed to verify that, they don't know who I am because they think I'm lying about who I am. Otherwise what stops me DoSing Sam Altman's account by saying I'm him and then failing to verify?

[JimDabell]

> If I told them who I was and then failed to verify that, they don't know who I am because they think I'm lying about who I am.

They know who you claim to be. It’s not like they just delete all information about you when you fail verification. They are perfectly capable of seeing that two separate accounts are both claiming to be the same person.

> Otherwise what stops me DoSing Sam Altman's account by saying I'm him and then failing to verify?

For Sam Altman in particular? The fact that he’s the CEO. For people in general? Do you have their passport / driving license, and other details needed to attempt the verification process?

[tartoran]

You risk being silenly flagged and get nerfed responses. Somehting like shadow dumbed down.

[gentooflux]

That is an inherent and unavoidable risk regardless, as things stand if you want access to frontier models you are at the mercy of their providers.

[stingraycharles]

That’s quite a claim. What’s your source for this?

[0123456789ABCDE]

Fable's model card provides the following as a relevant reference

https://xcancel.com/ClaudeDevs/status/2064949876463645026

[handoflixue]

They already reversed course on that decision a couple of days later. Trivial to find a source, but Fable is also rather notably not available to the public right now, so it's not actually a relevant threat.

[stingraycharles]

That’s totally unrelated. The post I was replying to claimed that if you create a new account with OpenAI and that gets detected, your whole account gets silently “nerfed”.

That is not in any way related to Fable (visibly) being switched to a less strong model if you’re trying to discuss certain topics.

[shevy-java]

So ... like reddit! :)

Thankfully I don't depend on any of such services. It would make me rather angry.

[qingcharles]

Reddit is the only platform that actually tells you that you are shadowbanned, so at least they are upfront about it, but their appeal system sucks. My friend just appealed every day for just over 600 days and finally got their account un-shadowbanned.

[handoflixue]

"It only took two years for my friend to appeal a Ban"

If you're willing to wait a couple years, I dare say a few services might have changed their minds by then, so it's too early to judge.

[inigyou]

Reddit doesn't tell you you're shadowbanned. You are thinking of regular banned.

[inigyou]

HN also has shadowbans. If your preferences have showdead=yes, you might see some.

[slim]

or you can scan you retina using sam altmans device and get access immediately /s