[ACCount37]

You should. Feel like a conspiracy theorist when saying things like this.

Users are not reliable or consistent model evaluators. Users adapt to models - the moment they get a model that performs better, their expectations rise, their tasks get harder and their prompts get shorter.

"They made the model worse" is PEBKAC in 9 cases out of 10.

[svnt]

There are few conspiracies where the vectors between "capitalist organization makes more money" and "user can't reliably distinguish tiers of product quality" overlap.

[ACCount37]

I wish the users weren't so fucking stupid with the "they made the model worse" stuff.

Then that 1 out of 10 case where the model was actually made worse (whether intentionally or by mistake) would stand out instead of being swallowed by the noise floor.