[ElProlactin]

> I am not asking you "what the courts would say", I am asking you personally: you really don't see a problem in normalizing a world where people can only conduct business if they subject themselves to give away personal data?

Companies like Meta and Google collude with media/publishers/online service providers to track you across the web and use your data to target you for advertising even when you aren't registered or logged into their services. Data brokers whose names nobody knows gather and sell information about every single American. Credit bureaus track some of your most sensitive financial data whether you like or not, and sell it to companies who use it to make some of the most important decisions that affect you financially.

Anthropic asking customers who voluntarily choose to do business with Anthropic for ID so that they can comply with sanctions laws is not the same thing.

[rglullis]

> Companies like Meta and Google

This is some weird whataboutism, and it doesn't answer my question.

> Anthropic asking customers who voluntarily choose to do business

Anthropic is changing the terms. It used to be until last week that ID is not required. Now it is. Some of these customers are now reconsidering their relationship, and it seems you are here saying they should just accept it without a second thought, because "this is what other companies do it anyway". This is the part I am struggling to understand.

[ElProlactin]

> Anthropic is changing the terms. It used to be until last week that ID is not required. Now it is.

The Anthropic page related to ID verification is not new. It existed in April and had some minor changes made last week.

https://www.diffchecker.com/HuY8QMOX/

We can disagree, but please don't misrepresent the facts: new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default, nor are existing customers being contacted en masse to do so. ID verification is being used with some customers and it appears this is primarily related to account suspensions that are typically due to usage patterns, fraud concerns, etc.

> Some of these customers are now reconsidering their relationship, and it seems you are here saying they should just accept it without a second thought, because "this is what other companies do it anyway".

I'm not saying anything of the sort. What I am saying is that I find it odd to base a decision to close a Claude account on the basis that asking for ID verification represents an assault against privacy.

Even though Anthropic says that its ID verification is not related to Mythos/Fable, in our discussion, I have pointed out that as a US company, Anthropic could be required to comply with various export controls that are implemented under well-established and perfectly-legal export control regulations.

It is also perfectly normal for companies to require ID verification for some customers under certain circumstances to address legitimate usage and fraud concerns.

[rglullis]

> new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default

If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service.

> I find it odd to base a decision to close a Claude account on the basis that asking for ID verification represents an assault against privacy.

The decision does not have one specific reason. For example, I closed my account when they stopped allowing usage of OpenCode with a regular subscription. Some other people are now asking if the service they are getting is really worth it and if they should support a company which actively working towards this two-class system.

[ElProlactin]

> If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service.

You have no inherent, God-given legal right to access Mythos. Once again, the US government (and in particular the executive branch) has a broad and well-established legal authority to regulate advanced technologies under national security and export control regulations.

If you want to buy, say, the most advanced NVIDIA chips, you can be subject to verifications as well because these are subject to export controls.

> The decision does not have one specific reason. For example, I closed my account when they stopped allowing usage of OpenCode with a regular subscription. Some other people are now asking if the service they are getting is really worth it and if they should support a company which actively working towards this two-class system.

Anthropic is a private company. It is allowed to decide how to provision its service, and make changes to its service. This has absolutely nothing to do with "Surveillance Capitalism".

You have the right to vote with your wallet, which you have done. If enough people make the same decision, Anthropic will likely have to reconsider its decisions. That's capitalism, is it not?

[rglullis]

These are a lot of rationalizations for you to justify the actions of a company whose CEO talks a lot about ethics, but when push comes to shove acts like any other corporate drone.

Also, you are talking a lot about what Anthropic can do but completely evading to actually say what you think they should do. It tells me that you know how reprehensible their ethics are, but for some reason you refuse to reject them.

[ElProlactin]

We've had an interesting back-and-forth about identity verification but it seems that you don't really care about that issue.

It seems that you just don't like the way Anthropic is run, and a focal point of that is that you're unhappy you can't access Fable and Mythos.

To be clear: the US government issued an order that required Anthropic to suspend access to Fable and Mythos by any foreign national. The company had to comply or it could face significant penalties. According to the company, the only way it could comply with the government order was to suspend access to everyone.

The ID verification page being discussed here has been around since before this order was issued. Like many companies, Anthropic may ask some customers for ID verification, primarily to prevent fraud and abuse. ID verification is not required to sign up, and existing customers are not all being asked to perform it.

Frankly, I think a lot of these companies are ethically-challenged, but not making the latest and greatest models available to everyone who wants them and complying with legal government orders are not the strongest arguments about their ethical shortcomings.