The criticism isn't that they believe in safety too much. It's that they patently using safety as a red herring with the actual goal of regulating away competition that they know the cannot beat.

The people involved have been talking about safety long before they had any users or a company.

"Concrete Problems in AI Safety" by Dario and another founder was published 2016, anthropic was founded 2021. Among a bunch of other examples, including other founders.

If safety is seen as a joke now, it was really seen as a joke back then. The reason they keep shooting themselves in the foot with bad PR is because they truly believe in risks.

(so far they're also the only ones that have had their models banned, during a rare time they had a clear lead, and the only ones frustrating users with high safety controls. I can't see how this is maximising market position)