Imagine if it were Comcast instead of Claude. Comcast gives you 750GB of data a month. Now they decide that visiting HN 'counts' as 750GB and either shut you off or bill you extra. Is that price discrimination or changing the terms after the fact?

Not a great example since using Anthropic subscriptions with third party applications was never allowed, they just didnt take steps to prevent it until recently.

Depends. Comcast is able to charge you and a business for the same service at different rates. They have also tried to do exactly what you're talking about, where they bill differently based on the data being accessed (remember net neutrality?).

But that's a bad example, price discrimination for commodities is generally not legal, while discrimination for services is. Data is arguably a commodity (ianal, I'm not up to date on the law of this). "Tokens" are not.

In fact the law makes carve outs specifically for businesses that sell services to discriminate on price based exactly on how the service is used and by who. And they do it all the time.

Whether it's fair or not, up to you to decide as a consumer. If you don't like it don't pay for it.