HN

Comments (229)

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  mentalgear
  Posting it here as a top-level comment as many people asked why boycott just openAi:-----openAI is the least trustworthy of the Big LLM providers. See S(c)am Altman's track record, especially his early comments in senate hearings where:* he warned of engagement-optimisation strategies, like social media, being used for chatbots / LLMs.* also, he warned that "ads would be the last resort" for LLM companies.Both of his own warnings he casually ignored as ChatGPT / openAI has now fully converted to Facebook's tactics of "move fast and break things" - even if it is society itself. A complete turn away from the original AI for science lab it was founded as, which explains why every real (founding) ML scientist has left the company years ago.While still being for-profit outfits, at least DeepMind and Anthrophic are headed by actual scientists - not marketing guys. At least for me, that brings me some confidence in their intentions as, as scientists we often seek knowledge, not power for power's sake.
• CompoundEyes
  Altman tweet: “Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”From that it reads like the administration quickly agreed to the terms Anthropic wanted with OpenAI instead.
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  ChicagoDave
  Here’s my take:- when I saw Altman driving a multimillion dollar car while OpenAI was still a nonprofit, all of his scientists left to start rival firms, and the details of why they tried to fire him were legit, I dumped ChatGPT and moved to the new company - Anthropic.- The Pro Max $200/month subscription has uncapped my workflow to where I’ve created several substantial and complex applications in compressed timeframes. (https://devarch.ai if you want to be productive)- Anthropic has clearly evolved towards being a good corporate citizen and is staging itself to replace the market’s developer-first mentality from its past leaders (Microsoft, Google, Oracle).- Claude Code in the last three months has finally made it possible to dump Windows and buy a loaded MacBook Pro. It’s been a week since I logged into my Surface Laptop 5.- if Anthropic does break from its current evolutionary trajectory, I plan to build out my own at-home platform anyway. The open source models are extraordinarily effective.
• teiferer
  I expected the comments to mention Scott Galloway. Haven't found his name here, so I am doing that now.Context is his https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/ campaign.
• motbus3
  I will say that I work for a company where the owner is a stubborn old man who thinks you need to pay for the services and nothing you get indirectly should be considered honest and fair.The company downsized 4 times in 3 years... We are still trying, but people see no value because they don't understand how they will be bitten back
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  maplethorpe
  I really didn't expect OpenAI to do something as immoral as this, despite their history of stealing the world's data to create a public-facing deep-fake generation machine. I am shocked and appalled.
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  mark_l_watson
  I stopped paying OpenAI a long time ago. I get that actually deleting your OpenAI account hurts their ‘numbers’ and thus possibly their valuation. I choose another path: I use their tokens for free, hopefully helping them go out of business a little sooner.The irony is that until yesterday I felt more or less the same about Anthropic. Last night I paid for an Anthropic subscription I don’t need in order to both support their current cause vs. the US government and help their ‘numbers.’
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  aniviacat
  I was just about to change from OpenAI to Anthropic, however when signing up I get this message:> Unfortunately, Claude is not available to new users right now. We're working hard to expand our availability soon.That's unfortunate timing.
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  abbadadda
  LOL I keep getting, “ Oops, an error occurred! Too many failed attempts. Try again”… my login codes are mysteriously not working when trying to delete my OpenAI/ChatGPT account.
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  8cvor6j844qw_d6
  Just a heads up for people that used phone numbers to verify their account before you decide to proceed with account deletion.> New accounts are still subject to our limit of 3 accounts per phone number. Deleted accounts also count toward this limit.> Deleting an account does not free up another spot.> A phone number can only ever be used up to 3 times for verification to generate the first API key for your account on platform.openai.com.
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  lackoftactics
  I am buying Anthrophic subscription. I know everything could change and they could also turn evil, but currently they showed willingness to be the good guy
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  mikkupikku
  Normally I'd be quite cynical here and say few people will actually do this, but it's OpenAI and Anthropic is an arguably superior option anyway. I've only given money to Anthropic in the first place. Why have people been doing business with OpenAI? Is it better than Claude at something I'm not familiar with?
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  hliyan
  Even for people who intend to use it in the future, there's a way to send a message with only a 30 day hiatus: if you really want, you can recreate the account with the same email address after 30 days, withe a clean slate. I'm between a slight rock and a hard place so cannot completely get out of OAI just yet, but I can manage 30 days without it.
• jhack
  Done and done. Hope everyone can find the time and do the same.
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  cedws
  Next week Anthropic will do something evil and everyone will be moving back to OpenAI.Crazy thought but maybe we should regulate AI instead of relying on the hegemony of three companies to police themselves.
• gradus_ad
  Poll: are you boycotting because OpenAI is working with a military, or specifically because it is working with the US military?
• zkmon
  For people who still have e instincts to estimate other people by their face and gestures, Mr Altman appears glaringly a conman.
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  ekjhgkejhgk
  Ok I'll bite: Why is this interesting? Is it because it's really difficult to delete? Or what?
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  MinimalAction
  Quite offtopics:1. For a site visited by millions, a header element (perhaps h2, h3, h4) followed by a paragraph has such less spacing, it looks weird and hard to read.2. There is an interesting question at the end [0]: Can you reactivate my deleted account? I was quite interested because if the could, then they never really deleted the data. The page doesn't answer that question satisfactorily at all![0]: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9019931-can-you-reactiva...
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  stingraycharles
  Why, though? What, really, does anyone envision the next decade with government + AI is going to be like?Obviously mass surveillance is already happening. Obviously the line between “human kills other human” is blurring for a long time already, eg remote operated drones. Missiles are already remotely controlled and navigating and detecting and following moving targets autonomously.What’s the goal of people who think deleting their OpenAI account will make an impact?
• findthebug
  all what i hear is mimimimi...guys big tech is playing this game for decades now. what changed? they selling private data, manipulating society, turning children in doom scrolling addicts. facebook, google and others doing this for years an no one cares. i deleted fb and whatsup years ago, 99% of my friends and fam still using it until today.as long as they can flip some dollars nothing will change and 99% will not delete anything because of 99% are to lazy and give a shit.
• chazftw
  I don’t trust OpenAI, as they don’t trust me.
• hilliardfarmer
  Deleted.
• tvbusy
  I don't have an account with them. Would it make sense to sign up and create a script to use up the monthly free quota with random characters?
• fandorin
  I haven’t used chatgpt for so long now. Only Claude and Gemini. Account permanently removed.
• layer8
  As the page seems to be broken at the moment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260210082000/https://help.open...
• wraptile
  Honestly it is a good time to vote with your wallet - the difference between the models for day to day tasks is very miniscule.
• anon
  undefined
• adam12
  Could this be the pin?
• Beestie
  Done.
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  zkmon
  Unfortunately, HN might represent a very tiny percentage of the decision makers who conduct business with OpenAI.
• silverwind
  Good think I never had one.
• ck2
  Yeah sure right after everyone deletes their X account and stops posting links hereAltman's immorality is theoreticalMusk's is literal, he's murdered a million people by purposely destroying USAID, leaving food and medication already paid for to rot in warehouses
• cjmcqueen
  Deleted. I never spent much money with OpenAI, but it's the signal/vote that I have to give the system that more killing, working with DoW, and caving into the Trump administration is an unpopular choice
• frag
  nothing is permanent... and i wonder if they actually delete your account (of course not)
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  RicoElectrico
  FYI for basic stuff you can always use duck.ai which also aggregates other models.
• segfaultex
  Deleted mine months ago. Altman is one of the slimiest tech ceos out there, which is saying something.
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  lvl155
  I canceled my subscription though I still have a lot of money in API (which I know they don’t refund). I will sundown and move it all over to Anthropic/Google. It’s pretty clear to me what OAI is doing. Shame on anyone working there selling their souls for a few more pennies.Shame because Codex was a bit better for me in the past few weeks but not enough to justify spending my money on them.
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  resters
  We've seen the Trump administration disregard so many laws already, and abuse power so excessively, that Sam's comments come off as exceptionally and willfully naive, or exceptionally and willfully greedy to the point of truly not caring that OpenAI's technology will undoubtedly be used to break many, many more laws and violate the civil rights or human rights of many, many more people.For a few months now, ChatGPT 5.x has been somewhat lobotomized on political issues and has appeared to substitute a gpt-4o caliber "fair and balanced" response whenever anything where a reasoning AI would criticize the Trump administration might end up in the response output. Surely that was part of the pitch at some level, and now the deal has been won.Greg Brockman apparently donated money to Trump, and the whole OpenAI team put on suits and posed for pictures with Donald and behaved officiously before Donald facilitated the $100M "deal" that ended up falling apart later.The only way authoritarian control could be exerted over AI at scale was to make AI companies dependent on government contracts for survival. OpenAI's fundraise would not have happened without the contract signed, and the money would have gone to Grok or whichever competitor was willing to submit.Before long much of the reasoning capabilities of models will be neutered, the capacity to inform and to disrupt science and technology will be stripped from the models to preserve the status quo and to preserve authoritarian control.Silicon Valley pushing for Federal laws preventing states from regulating AI is not just anti-democratic (building software has never been cheaper so of course building compliance with state laws would have been extremely affordable in relative terms). But forced Federal limits on state laws create a monopoly and grant the early winners incumbent status for a while, which is a financial outcome, not a technological or social one.Enjoy frontier AI while you can, because it will go away. More and more topics will get the lobotomized output, your conversation will be flagged and you will be given a score assessing the level of threat you pose to the regime. This stuff is already in place. Even Claude does it if you ask about Gaza, but a bit of well-reasoned argumentation will convince it. OpenAI's lobotomies are deeper and more insidious.I call upon OpenAI to follow DeepSeek's lead and open source more models and techniques.
• ukblewis
  This is utter BS. You’re entitled not agree with a company… but using Hacker News to shout that at the world. Just shitty behaviour
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  mvelbaum
  I can't believe that people simply bought into Anthropic's PR messaging. This has nothing to do with "mass surveillance" (which is illegal anyway) or killbots, it's all about Dario wanting to be able to override lawful use:[0] https://x.com/CardilloSamuel/status/2027536128291528846[1] https://x.com/UnderSecPD/status/2027353177578783204[2] https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2027616890516889658I think it's quite rich all these people virtue signaling when: (1) Anthropic (and other labs) committed large scale theft of copyrighted materials to train their models. (2) Anthropic collects large swaths of data on its users (3) Dario seemed to have no issue working to help the CCP: https://x.com/ubuto23/status/2027578089371267201Also, you must understand that if you support Anthropic, then you should be against Open Source models.
• hkt
  In the app, account deletion currently errors saying the action can't be started. Hard to believe this is coincidence.
• wateralien
  Done.
• tamimio
  I never used openAI, or any other AI except claude casually on some stuff, but until this date never relied on it, hopefully I will keep it that way just like how I never had social media.
• xyst
  This is what happens when a snake oil salesman like Sam Altman back door deals/sleazes his way back into a company. He is doing anything to keep Titanic from sinking. Stooping as low as catering to this garbage administration, and being used as a political pawn.
• adverbly
  Done
• wosined
  Boycott them all. Shit anti-human tech & philosophy.
• cynicalsecurity
  Nope.
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  webdevver
  wish oai was publicly traded so i could buy the dip on all this nonsense. the one for musk was super juicy.
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  curtisblaine
  [flagged]
• kopollo
  [flagged]
• andela4a
  [flagged]
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  heraldgeezer
  Why are your panties in a twist?Do you rather be killed by Chinese AI instead?
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  blell
  It’s 2026, guys. Stop it with this performative bs. It’s cringe.
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  iugtmkbdfil834
  I am confused. Nothing has changed ( except, obviously, public perception of things ). Why would openAI be a target to 'punish' now and not other times it transgressed ( especially now that it didn't actually do anything )? Honestly, this crap annoys me more than anything else.Don't get me wrong. I am personally a personal inference machine advocate, but I kinda accept it may not be a viable path for everyone.
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  tzahifadida
  What about claude? Don't think they wont be used militarily that is naive...
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  pluc
  You can't close this box you've opened. I hope saving time on keystrokes was worth your democracy freedom and privacy. I'm gonna have fun watching it get ripped away
• VladVladikoff
  This feels like performative virtue signalling which is really not in the spirit of hacker news.
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  rabf
  First you want the goverment to regulate AI. Now you want AI companies to regulate the goverment? Personally when I buy something I do whatever I want with it and imagine the DOD feels the same.
• hakrgrl
  It's a sad irony where the most privileged and protected people (hn crowd) attack the people, institutions, and traditions (us govt, military) that made possible the peaceful and abundant world they take for granted.