Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

I am sure the company is going to get very upset at people no longer paying who were using their product in a way that they did not intend. Just going to be heartbroken. I will never understand the people that make a big deal about "I will never support this business again because of x" when X not something the company ever officially said they cared about.

In all seriousness, I really don't think it should be a controversial opinion that if you are using a companies servers for something that they have a right to dictate how and the terms. It is up to the user to determine if that is acceptable or not.

Particularly when there is a subscription involved. You are very clearly paying for "Claude Code" which is very clearly a piece of software connected to an online component. You are not paying for API access or anything along those lines.

Especially when they are not blocking the ability to use the normal API with these tools.

I really don't want to defend any of these AI companies but if I remove the AI part of this and just focus on it being a tool, this seems perfectly fine what they are doing.

To me it's very easy to understand why people would be upset and post about it online.

1. The company did something the customers did not like.

2. The company's reputation has value.

3. Therefore highlighting the unpopular move online, and throwing shade at the company so to speak, is (alongside with "speaking with your wallet") one of the few levers customers have to push companies to do what they want them to do.

Sure, it is perfectly valid to complain all you want. But it is also important to remember the context here.

I could write an article and complain about Taco Bell not selling burgers and that is perfectly within my right but that is something they are clearly not interested in doing. So me saying I am not going to give them money until they start selling burgers is a meaningless too them.

Everything I have seen about how they have marketed Claude Code makes it clear that what you are paying for is a tool that is a combination of a client-side app made by them and the server component.

Considering the need to tell the agent that the tool you are using is something it isn't, it is clear that this ever working was not the intention.

> So me saying I am not going to give them money until they start selling burgers is a meaningless too them.

Sure, but that's because you're you. No offense, but you don't have a following that people use to decide what fast food to eat. You don't have posts about how Taco Bell should serve burgers, frequently topping one of the main internet forums for people interested in fast food.

HN front page articles do matter. They get huge numbers of eyeballs. They help shape the opinions of developers. If lots of people write articles like this one, and it front pages again and again, Anthropic will be at serious risk of losing their mindshare advantage.

Of course, that may not happen. But people are aware it could.

> I will never understand the people that make a big deal

> It is up to the user to determine if that is acceptable or not.

It sounds like you understand it perfectly.

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