[qwery]

The article is really quite reasonable and calmly presented, actually. Your claim re. the intent of the fingerprinting is a guess. Normal developers are the users that aren't taking steps to avoid being flagged by this system.

The software is written in a deliberately obtuse way, presumably in service of some (unknown to us) goal. This is a deceptive and anti-social thing to do, it is by nature an adversarial stance to adopt. An already adversarial actor may be "punished" by this, but in such a relationship, hostility can be expected. A non-adversarial actor -- a normal developer / user -- is being harmed by this because the software is treating them as an adversary.

Further, lets assume your guess is correct and, in addition, that Anthropic elects to alter/downgrade/poison their service[0] for users that fit a particular pattern of markers. It's obvious how this system would "punish normal developers" (i.e. not the intended target/victim) that happen to fit those patterns.

[0] to some extent, the service already has been altered as its behaviour depends on the prompt text