I don't think this counts as a "dark pattern". The reality is that these services are resource constrained, so they are trying to build in resource limits that are as fair as possible and prevent people from gaming the system.

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const_cast 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The dark pattern isn't the payment pattern, that's fine. The dark pattern is hiding how much you're using, thereby tricking the human lizard brain into irrationally fearing they are running out.

The human brain is stupid and remarkably exploitable. Just a teensy little bit of information hiding can illicit strange and self-destructive behavior from people.

You aren't cut off until you're cut off, then it's over completely. That's scary, because there's no recourse. So people are going to try to avoid that as much as possible. Since they don't know how much they're using, they're naturally going to err on the side of caution - paying for more than they need.

	▲	gorbypark 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm only on the $20 Pro plan, and I'm a big users of the /clear command. I don't really use Claude Code that much either, so the $20 plan is perfect for me. However, a few times I've gotten the "approaching context being full, auto compact coming soon" thing, so I manually do /compact and I run out of the 5hr usage window while compacting the context. It's extremely infuriating because if I could have a view into how close I was to being rate limited in the 5 hour window, I might make a different choice as to compact or finish the last little thing I was working on.

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aspenmayer 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> prevent people from gaming the system

If I sit down for dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet, I get to decide how much I’m having for dinner. I don’t mind if they don’t let me take leftovers, as it is already understood that they mean as much as I can eat in one sitting.

If they don’t want folks to take advantage of an advertised offer, then they should change their sales pitch. It’s explicitly not gaming any system to use what you’re paying for in full. That’s your right and privilege as that’s the bill of goods you bought and were sold.

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Wowfunhappy 4 days ago | parent [-]

I feel like using Claude Code overnight while you sleep or sharing your account with someone else is equivalent to taking home leftovers from an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I also find it hard to believe 5% of customers are doing that, though.

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aspenmayer 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

If that’s off-peak time, I’d argue the adjacent opposite point, that Anthropic et al could implement deferred and/or scheduled jobs natively so that folks can do what they’re going to do anyway in a way that comports with reasonable load management that all vendors must do.

For example, I don’t mind that Netflix pauses playback after playing continuously for a few episodes of a show, because the options they present me with acknowledge different use cases. The options are: stop playing, play now and ask me again later, and play now and don’t ask me again. These options are kind to the user because they don’t disable the power user option.

	▲	gorbypark 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Is there really an off peak time, though? I think Anthropic is running on AWS with the big investment from Amazon, right? I'm sure there's some peaks and valleys but with the Americas, Europe and Asia being in different time zones I'd expect there'd be a somewhat "baseline" usage with peaks where the timezones overlap (European afternoons and American mornings, for example). I know in my case I get the most 503 overloaded errors in the European afternoon.

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closewith 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I use Claude Code with Opus four days a week for about 5 hours a day. I've only once hit the limit. Yet the tool others mentioned here (ccusage) indicates I used about $120 in API equivalents per day or about $1,800 to date this month on a $200 subscription. That has to be a loss leader for Anthropic that they now want to wind back.

I also wouldn't consider my usage extreme. I never use more than one instance, don't run overnight, etc.

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kelnos 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think this is just a bad analogy. I've definitely set Claude Code on a task and then wandered off to do something else, and come back an hour or so later to see if it's done. If I'd chosen to take a nap, would you say I'm "gaming the system"? That's silly. I'm using an LLM agent to free up my own time; it's up to me to decide what I do with that time.

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Wowfunhappy 4 days ago | parent [-]

No, this doesn't sound like gaming the system to me. However, if you were using a script to automatically queue up tasks so they can run as soon as your 5-hour-session expires to ensure you're using Claude 24/7, that's a different story. A project like this was posted to HN relatively recently.

As I said, I have trouble believing this constitutes 5% of users, but it constitutes something and yeah, I feel Anthropic is justified in putting a cap on that.

	▲	yunohn 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		They always have had a “soft” sessions limit per month anyway, so it still doesn’t make sense to limit weekly.

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benterix 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I use Claude Code overnight almost exclusively, it's simply not worth my time during the day. It's just easier to prepare precise instructions, let it run and check the results in the morning. If it goes awry (it usually does), I can modify the instructions and start from scratch, without getting too attached to it.

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hshdhdhj4444 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Besides the click mazes to unsubscribe I’m struggling to think of a darker pattern than having usage limits but not showing usage.

The dark pattern isn’t the usage limit. It’s the lack of information about current and remaining usage.

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Timwi 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The dark pattern is not telling users how much they've used so they can't plan or ration.