It is still not the users fault, pricing is not their responsibility. As a user, I check the price and what the service offers, then I subscribe and I use it. If these users did something illegal or breaking some conditions, any service would be free to block them. But they didn’t, meaning the AI tools promised too much for the price so they update their conditions, they are basically figuring out the pricing.

I don’t know what is there to be mad about, and using dramatic language like “everyone suffers because of them”

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Tokumei-no-hito 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

depends on your view of collectivist vs individualistic.

if your actions are defined by legal ToS then no, they didn't do anything wrong. they paid, it's the company's fault for not expecting someone to use 50-100x a reasonable usage.

if your actions are defined by ethical use then you understood that 50-100x the use would inevitably lead to ruining the party for everyone.

it's like a buffet. everyone pays a flat price and can enjoy a big meal for themselves. maybe sometimes having a few extra pieces of cake here and there. until someone shows up and starts stacking plates well beyond any reasonable expectation (not rule based) of a buffet customer. what's the result? stringent rules that are used for legal rather than rational enforcement.

it's obvious that even "reasonable use" is being subsidized, and the company was okay with doing so. until we have people running 10 opus instances in a glutinous orchestra of agents just because they can. now the party is over. and i'd love to know what these claude agencies were even producing running 24/7 on opus. i can't imagine what human being even has the context to process what 24/7 teams of opus can put out. much like i can't imagine the buffet abuser actually enjoying the distending feast. but here we are.

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jedberg 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tragedy of the commons. You are totally right, they didn't violate any policy. But they violated their moral obligation to not abuse a shared resource.

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const_cast 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's not a public good - these people weren't shitting in the park. It's a paid-for service and they were paying customers, getting their money's worth.

The price simply did not reflect the cost, and that's a problem. It happens to a lot of business and sometimes consumer's call their bluff. Whoops.

You wanna cheat and undercut competitors by shooting yourself in the foot with costs that exceed price? Fine. It's a tale as old as time. Here, have your loss lead - xoxo, every consumer.

Just charge per unit.

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jedberg 4 days ago | parent [-]

I never said it was a public good. I said it was a shared resource.

The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a GPU farm, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether.

That is exactly what happened here. The price was fine if everyone upheld their moral obligation not to abuse it.

	▲	const_cast 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		There is no moral obligation, only the terms and conditions. That's your actual obligation. There's only one person who made a mistake here - Anthropic. They purposefully make their terms and conditions bad, and then when people played by the contract they set forth, they lost money. It's calling a bluff. Anthropic purposefully priced this far too aggressively to undercut their competitors. Companies with stupid amounts of investor capital do that all the time. They flew too close to the sun. You can't create a contract, have all the power in the world to rig the contract in your favor, and then complain about said contract. Everyone was following the rules. The problem was the rules were stupid. To be more specific - abuse requires an exercise of power. End-users have no power at all. They have literally zero leverage over the contract and they have no power to negotiate. They can't abuse anything, they're too weak.

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48terry 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Just in case everybody in this comment tree forgot: Claude is not some common, public good. It barely even qualifies as a digital commons, if it does. It is a private tool owned by a private, for-profit company. Nobody has a common obligation to make Anthropic profitable or to reduce its expenses.

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jedberg 4 days ago | parent [-]

I never said anything about a public good. See my sibling comment.

	▲	48terry 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The "finite, valuable resource" in this case being "something a private company is actively trying to produce and pocket wealth with". Again, there is no moral obligation to ensure Anthropic's business goes well and conveniently.

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currymj 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

a lot of "all you can eat" restaurants have to charge extra for uneaten food. there are people who just enjoy the feeling of abundance they get from paying a flat fee and then wasting something.

This is clearly what was happening with the most extreme Claude Code users, because it's not actually that smart yet and still requires a human to often be in the loop.

However, Anthropic can't really identify "wasted code".

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Aurornis 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I don’t know what is there to be mad about, and using dramatic language like “everyone suffers because of them”

Why are you assuming everyone will suffer?

They backtested the new limits on usage data and found it will begin to impact less than 5% of users.