Posting it here as a top-level comment as many people asked why boycott just openAi:<p>-----<p>openAI is the least trustworthy of the Big LLM providers. See S(c)am Altman's track record, especially his early comments in senate hearings where:<p>* he warned of engagement-optimisation strategies, like social media, being used for chatbots / LLMs.<p>* also, he warned that "ads would be the last resort" for LLM companies.<p>Both of his own warnings he casually ignored as ChatGPT / openAI has now fully converted to Facebook's tactics of "move fast and break things" - even if it is society itself. A complete turn away from the original AI for science lab it was founded as, which explains why every real (founding) ML scientist has left the company years ago.<p>While still being for-profit outfits, at least DeepMind and Anthrophic are headed by actual scientists - not marketing guys. At least for me, that brings me some confidence in their intentions as, as scientists we often seek knowledge, not power for power's sake.
Just boycott them all if you can. That's what I've done.<p>Some people's livelihoods probably depends on Claude and they can't say use Glm4.7 on HF. Fine. But it's a moral compromise, that's life sometimes you need to compromise what you want for what you need. just don't tell yourself it's a reasonable line to hold.<p>I can't decouple from Google unfortunately but I accept that without fooling myself into thinking "Oh but Google are fine".
Z.ai<p>>>What happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, June Fourth Incident<p>>! Content Security Warning: The input text data may contain inappropriate content
Why are compromises not reasonable lines to hold?
> I can't decouple from Google unfortunately<p>Why not?
Same here, because I'm a part owner of a restaurant and we'd probably lose half our business without being on Google Maps as it's not in a busy street.
Google is a godsend for SMEs: it's the way out of Microsoft. Many a small mom and pop shop ties themselves to Google Workspace, pay the subscription, and this allows them to manage their entire SME from either a Mac, a PC running Windows, a PC running Linux (yup), a Chromebook and/or even their phone. Don't tell me it's not happening: I know several companies doing just that.<p>It's an "all in one" solution that allows SMEs to not have to use Windows.<p>The lock-in is real: once several employees all have their Google Workspace account and some Google Drive docs are shared with people from outside the company, it's hard to decouple from Google.<p>But at least you're not tied to the shittiest OS out there (Windows) and the mediocre company that produces it.
YouTube
enshitification at scale
I agree, if you can do boycott all of them (and maybe use open weight models locally or on e2ee cloud inference providers) - BUT I also think it 's crucial at a moment like this to take a stance against corporations like openAi that sign with the War Department, willing to introduce mass surveillance and autonomous weapons powered by brittle LLMs. This is a recipe for disaster and the only way they will sway away is by feeling it in the money/subscriptions and in their public image they so carefully crafted.<p>Note: yes, openAi claims it doesn't support the DoW above mentioned use-caes - but they have signed with the DoW and it is HIGHLY unlikely the DoW would give them a different terms than Antrohopic (at least regarding the substance). Maybe openAi was just happy with the "coat of paint" legalese the DoW offered - which Anthropic specifically called out as ineffective in their statement.
I also wouldn't put it past Altman, who is much more friendly with Trumpo's gov, to play a double game here to get their main competitor out of the game. But at least in this case I hope he's acting for the benefit of all by truly standing with Anthropic on the issue.
My impression is that this was never about the TOS. It was about breaking a contract with Anthropic by someone with an incentive to replace it with OpenAI.<p>I don’t have evidence, just using Occam’s razor.
>the DoW [...] the War Department<p>This is the same as saying "Gulf of America". Don't buy the propaganda. The name of the <i>Department of Defense</i> can only be changed by Congress.
> HIGHLY unlikely the DoW would give them a different terms than Antrohopic [sic]<p>I disagree. OpenAi getting the same deal while Anthropic is made a punching bag for resisting. This is very on brand, do not cross the King in public.<p>The Trump-Epstein administration is obsessed with social media and how they are perceived. Right vs wrong, consistency, accuracy, truth... these are all secondary to appearing "strong" or "winning". They care more about what they are going to tweet than the facts (see Patel, FBI, and the murder of Good & Pretti).<p>Now look at Iran, Trump said in a post "the calvary is coming" and now we have the largest military build up in the Middle East since invading Iraq. They are now claiming that Iran is days from a nuke and building missiles that can reach the US, after they said the "obliterated" it and fired people for even saying "we don't know yet" It's more likely they will be able to change these things by raining bombs from the sky...<p>It's imperative look strong and not like you were the one that backed down... One of Roy Cohn's earliest lessons to the young Donald
The reason this is on the front page now is because of Altmans recent deal with the department of war, not because of these general grievances.
Actually Google Gemini provides almost no control on the data you share. Same for Antigravity. No "opt-out" button, even as a lie. Even when you are a paying user. Only Google Workplace users have some control.<p>There is a setting in Gemini but it removes all your chat history. For Antigravity, I think there is nothing preventing them from use your code and data your agents upload in the background unless you are a workspace user.<p>Note: Canceled my ChatGPT subscription and deleted an account.
FYI I am a paying Workspace customer. I disabled Gemini retention. Doing so means no chat history sidebar- all are ephemeral. It was org-level. That became impractical. I re-enabled it. Magically, all of my old chats were back. The ones during no retention mode weren’t there. Perhaps if I’d left it off for more than 30 days the old stuff would have been truly removed.<p>The point is there is no conversation-level controls. It’s incredibly user-hostile.
I like Gemini the model, but the app itself sucks. You can't even delete conversations if you're an enterprise workspace user.
It's all or nothing for Gemini Pro.<p>I can't set a voice reminder on my Pixel without giving full access to my Google workspace (which includes all emails) which is explicitly allowed to be trained on per the terms. There is no per app toggle.<p>Voice reminders were the only thing assistants did well for years.<p>We are going backwards.
That's not correct, at least not here inEurope.<p>You can disable saving your activity In this case you chat's win't be stored or used.<p>If you use Gemini through Google Workspace, all chat's won't leave the workspace environment and won't be used for LLM training (as of now).
That's not correct. If you didable activity your data won't be used. You eon't have daved chats and can inly have one.
The API doesn't retain your data, but then you do need to pay fully for each token.
maybe they will have a human in the loop when vibe bombing the world, if the person agrees not to use an ad blocker
I generally agree with your take but the juvenile name-calling really weakens the point.
Your point stands just fine without the silly, uniquely-US-politics-style “SCAM Altman ha ha!” BS. I can feel myself getting dumber every time I am subject to one of these.
Don’t you think Grok / X.ai is worse?
Grok isn't even in the running. It's a "me too" embarrassment that only exists so the owner can feel as though he's a meaningful participant.
It is indeed, though personally I do not perceive Grok/xAi as one of the top LLM companies. Yes, they do some benchmark-maxing, but I do not think they are on par with Anthropic, Google/DeepMind or openAi.
Not a real AI company, every time Grok shows actual intelligence it gets lobotomized by Elon to glaze him
I know we should boycott openAI, i was just wondering if I should also boycott altman's other venture, Worldcoin which is down 97.27%? He said I'll get UBI soon
Oh yes, you get free UBI / Worldcoins - you just need to do a full scan with their creepy orb and allow a private-company to keep your full biometric data. That's not asking for too much, is it ... ?
Well you have to have customers to have a boycott
Don't forget the UBI/open-source BS he sold like a snakes-oil salesman and people even bought it.
Why boycott? Just use their free services and never pay for it. Cost them money instead of pay them money is a step further than boycott.
Investor confidence is far more important to them than cashflow, and the best way to shake investor confidence is with the magic words "user numbers are down".
That sounds smart but they still raise more money because they “have 900 million users”
If it’s free, then you’re the product. OpenAI gets your data and ad revenue, and can raise more investor money due to how many users they have.
# of sticky non-paying users still gives them more investment juice than per user costs deducts, since we're still in the speculative phase.
If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product being sold. No, thank you.
Free services are garbage, you dun know what you're getting routed to
You do probably give them useful data by doing that.
ChatGPT is going to try to influence you to buy certain products and use certain services. So you'll be the product in the end
This is why I haven't used OpenAI since early 2023-ish, and when I did I signed up with a masked email (though notably I'm sure they can tie my chats to me via my credit card :) ). afaict Sam Altman is essentially a sociopath, like lots of the "ruling elite" these days. And while I still use Gemini and Claude extensively and recognize some of the irony there, I view not using OpenAI as harm reduction to myself.
I distrust OpenAI as much as the next guy, but “Scam Altman” has “70-year-old uncle Facebook rant” energy.
We can lower that to a 54 year old:<p><a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889070627908145538" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889070627908145538</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935733153119010910" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935733153119010910</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1894244902357406013" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1894244902357406013</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955299075781431726" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955299075781431726</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889371675164303791" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889371675164303791</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935539112746041422" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935539112746041422</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955190817251102883" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955190817251102883</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955195673693077615" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955195673693077615</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889063777792069911" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889063777792069911</a>
<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1910171944671916305" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1910171944671916305</a>
I always assume people have lost the argument when they resort to giving people comedy names, regardless of what else they've said.
Sure, but I'll still do it if I think of a good one. I'm petty, but also now that all human output is fed into The Machine, there's a nonzero chance it may repeat my novel derogatory nickname to someone new.
> <i>I always assume people have lost the argument when they resort to giving people comedy names…</i><p>Sleepy Joe Biden used to agree.
It's using Trumpian tactics to carry an agenda.
Why not go a step further and be boycotting all of them, especially those that have government contracts.
Is Scam Altman the modern equivalent of Micro$oft?
I mean marketing is how business uses psychology to control the masses.. why would we think ai wouldn’t be used by businesses, governments, independent psychopaths?
I stopped paying OpenAI a long time ago. I get that actually deleting your OpenAI account hurts their ‘numbers’ and thus possibly their valuation. I choose another path: I use their tokens for free, hopefully helping them go out of business a little sooner.<p>The irony is that until yesterday I felt more or less the same about Anthropic. Last night I paid for an Anthropic subscription I don’t need in order to both support their current cause vs. the US government and help their ‘numbers.’
OpenAI just advertises that they’ll make you pay later and raises $100B+ on having “900M+ users”
I deleted all my free accounts (turns out I have a few...)<p>Learnt from GOOG that nothing is free. I'm now paying for Claude
Ads are imminent, TOS just changed to allow them, and free users will get trash models that are net positive profitable after ads. Better to just leave now.
I think what anthropic did yesterday was good, but I had to take a step back and think, well it wasn’t a bridge too far for them to allow claude to be used in the wildly illegal maduro kidnapping operation.
Right the red line wasn’t much of a line. If you’re drawing your line only at unconstitutional mass surveillance and allowing the DoD to build skynet because Claude’s not ready for it yet that’s not really a line of principle.
How is that not a line of principle? Principle doesn't mean where we'd all agree, nor does it mean what we'd deem acceptable, it just means there <i>is</i> a line somewhere - and mass surveillance or fully autonomous AI in the kill chain is a very clear principle.
It’s a line that no one else had enough backbone to draw so…
Do we know they were consulted on that, as opposed to it being the wake-up call that led to the breakup?
There's been a fair amount of speculation that pushing back after discovering that that had happened was what instigated this week's fun.
Did you ask these too: what was the full context? To what degree was Anthropic aware in advance? What was their action space (their options)? What would be the consequences of their next actions?<p>And of course: and what sources are you using?<p>I get it: moral oversimplification is tempting for many people. I understand digging in takes time, but this situation warrants extra consideration.<p>Ethics is complicated and much harder than programming. Ethical reasoning is a muscle you have to train. Generally speaking, it isn’t the kind of skill that you build in isolation. At the very least, a lot of awareness and introspection is required.<p>I’d like to think that HN is a fairly intelligent community. But I don’t assume too much. Going based on what I’ve seen here generally, I see a lot of shallow thinking. So I think it’s a reasonable concern to think many of us here have a pretty large blind spot (statistically) when it comes to “softer” skills like philosophy and ethics.<p>This is not me “blaming” individuals; our industry has strong bias and selection criteria. This is my overall empirical take based on participating here for years.<p>Still, I’d like to think we are sufficiently intelligent and we have sufficient means and time to fill the gaps. But we have to prove it. I suggest we start modeling and demonstrating the kind of behavior and reasoning that we want to see in the world.<p>You can probably tell that I lean heavily towards consequentialist ethics, but I don’t discount other kinds of ethical thinking. I just want everyone to think hard harder. Seek more context. Ask what you would do in another’s shoes and why. Recognize the incentives and constraints.<p>Many people are tempted to judge others. That’s human. I suggest tamping that down until you’ve really marinated in the full context.<p>Also, each of us probably has more influence with your own actions than merely judging others.<p>And let me be brutally honest about one’s impact. Organizing and collaborating is so much of a force multiplier (easily 100X) that not doing it for things you care about is moral failure!<p>I’m not discounting good intentions, but in my system of ethics, I put much more emphasis on our actions. And persuasion is an action, which is what I’m hoping to do here.
[dead]
Altman tweet:
“Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”<p>From that it reads like the administration quickly agreed to the terms Anthropic wanted with OpenAI instead.
Does "putting them in the agreement" mean "we will never allow them," or "we will not allow them if they are illegal?" Here's a link which says that the DoD was willing to make up with anthropic any time if they allowed surveillance of Americans: <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/anthropic-pentagon-supply-chain-risk-claude" rel="nofollow">https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/anthropic-pentagon-supply-c...</a><p>Another leak says the agreement "reflects existing law and the pentagon's policies." <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/pentagon-openai-safety-red-lines-anthropic" rel="nofollow">https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/pentagon-openai-safety-red-...</a><p>Seems like Altman wants to spin this as the same principled stand anthropic took, but they really caved to the DoD's "all legal applications" framing. Up to you to decide how much you think the law restrains the Pentagon here.
Altman wanted to you to believe he got the same deal Amodei didn't, because he has the art of deal.
There is almost certainly more to this whole DoD-Anthropic story than is getting through.
That's what Altman tweeted. Did it actually happen?
I was just about to change from OpenAI to Anthropic, however when signing up I get this message:<p>> Unfortunately, Claude is not available to new users right now. We're working hard to expand our availability soon.<p>That's unfortunate timing.
I wonder why that is...
You can always use z.ai or minimax
it was like that when I signed up in july last year too. Just waited a couple of days and I was able to signup.
They ask a phone number to sign up. WTF?<p>I signed up with openai a while ago and I didn’t need to provide any phone number…. I wanna delete my open ai account, but then I cannot use claude without a phone?
It’s a way to mitigate bot accounts. Arguably not the best way, arguably not the right cost/benefit, but all of these services see massive bot traffic and are in a constant battle.
When did you sign up for OpenAI? They been requiring a phone sign the very first betas
If you sign up with a Google account you don't need to give them a phone number. I realize the irony here.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's unusual and harmful to privacy to require a phone number.
I’m not disagreeing with you but I highly suggest getting something like a burner number. Google Voice and Twilio usually work for me, but sometimes they are flagged VOIP and blocked.
As you say, it's sort of a cat-and-mouse game, and I'd rather not play it. Fortunately, there are plenty of competitors that don't require a phone number.
Most places that ask for a phone number refuse to accept Google Voice or Twilio phone numbers. It's specifically to guarantee you have a cell-phone assigned number. Can anyone confirm whether Anthropic allows Google Voice or Twilio numbers?
Unfortunately it became so common we don’t even care anymore, one of those things that normalized
Wow, seriously? I signed my team up for it Thursday.
WTF?! Really? Then the bubble is bursting already.
It's not the bubble, it's the DoD
TIL capacity limits mean that the bubble is bursting. Peak HN user logic.
LOL I keep getting, “
Oops, an error occurred!
Too many failed attempts.
Try again”… my login codes are mysteriously not working when trying to delete my OpenAI/ChatGPT account.
When I type in 'DELETE', the button just stays disabled for me. When I tried to make the request through their 'Privacy' portal, I receive a mysterious 'Session expired' error message, and now I've been locked out with the message 'Too many failed attempts'...
Pour one out for the dev who got called on saturday morning to break the account deletion process
Probably, on the backend: “Server Error 500: Users deleting OpenAI Accounts too fast. Try again later.”
Did you type in your email? It seems already filled in because it shows you your email address as the placeholder text but you need to fill in.
Make sure you enter both DELETE and your email above.<p>It took me a minute to see this.
It claims that I can’t end my subscription because I signed up on another platform. How odd, once money is involved suddenly our AGI contender can’t implement basic features. Or I’m a fool somehow.
Failed logging in again to delete my OpenAI/ChatGPT account with, “ An unexpected error occurred while creating your session.”
Yeah they intentionally broke it. So on Monday morning, instead of just deleting my account, I will be terminating all of the accounts in our company and moving them all to Anthropic. Keep it up, Sam!
yeah, does not work for me either. Whatever I put in the DELETE input field, the button is still inactive,<p>Edit: Had to "submit a request".<p>So glad they let me request my account and data deleted, really grateful /s
I expected the comments to mention Scott Galloway. Haven't found his name here, so I am doing that now.<p>Context is his <a href="https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/</a> campaign.
I've been trying to delete accounts at Anthropic and Cursor because they don't let you change email addresses (don't even get me started on that stupidity). But until my subscriptions that I've cancelled run out and/or the final billing is done, I can't actually delete them. I can't just forfeit the remaining time on my month's subscription, I can't force them to bill me and shut it down, and nothing I do gets me where I can ask a human to just shut it down. I also have no option to remove my billing information in case someone gains access to my account under my old email address, which is trivial to do.<p>I honestly think I'm going to have to cancel my credit card and get it replaced to accomplish breaking that connection with those two companies.
Just a heads up for people that used phone numbers to verify their account before you decide to proceed with account deletion.<p>> New accounts are still subject to our limit of 3 accounts per phone number. Deleted accounts also count toward this limit.<p>> Deleting an account does not free up another spot.<p>> A phone number can only ever be used up to 3 times for verification to generate the first API key for your account on platform.openai.com.
Next week Anthropic will do something evil and everyone will be moving back to OpenAI.<p>Crazy thought but maybe we should regulate AI instead of relying on the hegemony of three companies to police themselves.
> Next week Anthropic will do something evil and everyone will be moving back to OpenAI.<p>Anthropic has been, relatively speaking, the most responsible of the frontier labs since its founding. There has never been a point at which OpenAI took a more measured and reasonable approach while Anthropic proceeded dangerously.<p>These are relative terms, but you'd have to not be paying attention to find this plausible.
Whom do we trust regulation with? Current US admin which is being run by team idiocracy, Europe that is run by senile men who don't even understand tech or can't even come to a consensus on smallest of issues or China which only does things that benefit their autocrats?<p>The issue is much more complex than "just regulate it" unfortunately.
Sure, but the reality is that the United States where these companies are headquartered currently has the exact opposite policy: Anthropic has been blacklisted by the DoW (and replaced by OpenAI) because the US administration thought that the very limited amount of self-regulation Anthropic insisted on was going too far.
We need an AI workers union. The real power and discernment is in the hands of the people building these systems. They are extremely difficult to replace and firing them basically guarantees they go to a competitor.<p><a href="https://notdivided.org/" rel="nofollow">https://notdivided.org/</a> is basically validation that there is appetite for something like this amongst them.
I’m all for regulation of AI, but that’s not a serious solution where the problem is the government pressuring private companies to do evil things. Consumer pressure isn’t much, but it’s not nothing.
This is obviously the ideal, but we have to operate in reality as it is today while pushing in the direction of the ideal.
Maybe we should regulate Government.
What does “regulate AI” even mean?<p>The applications it can be used for? That doesn’t work, it’s the governments that <i>want</i> abusive applications.<p>The size of models? That doesn’t work, it just discourages MoE.<p>Access by consumers? Great, now it’s just for megacorps and the military.<p>What, exactly, would successful regulation look like?
Is this how you justify not doing anything?
The problem is, who is "we".<p>When EU tries to regulate AI, they are accused of being against progress and will destroy their economies.<p>Any regulation that Trump would place on AI would be of the "do what I say and f*k up my opponents" kind. Which arguably is already happening.
We don't regulate, governments do.
capitalism cannot progress with regulation
I really didn't expect OpenAI to do something as immoral as this, despite their history of stealing the world's data to create a public-facing deep-fake generation machine. I am shocked and appalled.
The stories I’ve been reading say that the DoW’s agreement with OpenAI contain the very same limitations as the agreement with Anthropic did. In other words, they pressured Anthropic to eliminate those restrictions, Anthropic declined, then they made a huge fuss calling them “a radical left, woke company,” put them on the supply-chain risk list, then went with OpenAI even though OpenAI isn’t changing anything either.<p>The whole story makes no sense to me. The DoW didn’t get what they wanted, and now Anthropic is tarred and feathered.<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of-anthropics-ai-models-ff3550d9?st=TpEn2J&reflink=article_copyURL_share" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of...</a><p>“OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said the company’s deal with the Defense Department includes those same prohibitions on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, as well as technical safeguards to make sure the models behave as they should.”
They are desperate for cash.
The US govt is fighting against true immorality in this very hour, the radical Muslim Iranian government who has been murdering thousands of citizens and holding the population hostage for decades. Ask the Iranian people if they think openai is immoral.
Do you mean attacking a second country in the top 10 oil/gas reserve ranking in mere weeks, while threatening to invade a third?
This has nothing to do with Iran. If anything, getting into a brouhaha with Anthropic on the eve of a war was a bit idiotic.
The US/Israel attacks on Iran ... are you kidding?! Where to begin...?
The parents of the girls in the children’s school we just bombed could probably be convinced.
Even for people who intend to use it in the future, there's a way to send a message with only a 30 day hiatus: if you really want, you can recreate the account with the same email address after 30 days, withe a clean slate. I'm between a slight rock and a hard place so cannot completely get out of OAI just yet, but I can manage 30 days without it.
> there's a way to send a message with only a 30 day hiatus<p>And that message would be "We have a product so valuable/useful that not even their weak ideals and moral obligations could keep them away!"
Large corporations do not, and are not able to, respond to long term signals. One month is literally a third of a corporations's attention span (a financial quarter).
> And that message would be "We have a product so valuable/useful that not even their weak ideals and moral obligations could keep them away!"<p>Who knows, maybe within those 30 days you find that other offerings are good enough for your needs - I've largely moved over to Anthropic's Max subscription for all my needs, I don't even need Cerebras Coder anymore because Opus 4.6 is just so good.
Just use a different LLM lol. It’s not even the best one anymore
I am buying Anthrophic subscription. I know everything could change and they could also turn evil, but currently they showed willingness to be the good guy
Normally I'd be quite cynical here and say few people will actually do this, but it's OpenAI and Anthropic is an arguably superior option anyway. I've only given money to Anthropic in the first place. Why have people been doing business with OpenAI? Is it better than Claude at something I'm not familiar with?
I personally am getting better results with codex recently. Claude ($20 plan) honestly comes across as a total ai slop turd of an app (unreliable, frequent incidents, burns through the token after 2-3 prompts that just clinfinite loop doing nothing). Codex will iterate much faster.
It’s all anecdata, but I heavily used Claude over the last two weeks and found it very reliable. My company pays for tokens and I haven’t noticed incidents.
And yet so many people are having success with Claude Code. Perhaps you can learn from their experiences.
PSA: Export your ChatGPT conversations before cancelling
If you're thinking about cancelling (or switching to Claude/Gemini), don't lose months of conversations first.<p>I built Basic Memory — it imports your ChatGPT export and turns it into plain Markdown files. Every conversation becomes a file you can actually read, search, and use with whatever AI you switch to.<p>This is not an ad. It is free and open source. Your data belongs to you. Keep it.<p>Steps:<p>1. Settings → Data Controls → Export Data (ChatGPT emails you a zip)<p>2. Install Basic Memory (brew tap basicmachines-co/basic-memory && brew install basic-memory)<p>bm import chatgpt conversations.zip<p>Complete docs: <a href="http://docs.basicmemory.com" rel="nofollow">http://docs.basicmemory.com</a>
Here’s my take:<p>- when I saw Altman driving a multimillion dollar car while OpenAI was still a nonprofit, all of his scientists left to start rival firms, and the details of why they tried to fire him were legit, I dumped ChatGPT and moved to the new company - Anthropic.<p>- The Pro Max $200/month subscription has uncapped my workflow to where I’ve created several substantial and complex applications in compressed timeframes. (<a href="https://devarch.ai" rel="nofollow">https://devarch.ai</a> if you want to be productive)<p>- Anthropic has clearly evolved towards being a good corporate citizen and is staging itself to replace the market’s developer-first mentality from its past leaders (Microsoft, Google, Oracle).<p>- Claude Code in the last three months has finally made it possible to dump Windows and buy a loaded MacBook Pro. It’s been a week since I logged into my Surface Laptop 5.<p>- if Anthropic does break from its current evolutionary trajectory, I plan to build out my own at-home platform anyway. The open source models are extraordinarily effective.
> when I saw Altman driving a multimillion dollar car while OpenAI was still a nonprofit<p>If that would be a first time founder that would be much more of a red flag than for someone’s who’s already beyond rich and powerful even before OpenAI became a thing.
If Altman didn't go round cringe-inducingly saying he doesn't (relatively) have much of nor care about money and how he doesn't have a stake in OpenAI while plotting his power-hungry moves, and publish equally repulsive articles like "missionaries over mercenaries" while acting like the latter, then you might have hade a point. But given all that, sorry no.
Yeah I know he’d already bagged, but the optics were bad. The rest of my statement stands.
> Claude Code in the last three months has finally made it possible to dump Windows and buy a loaded MacBook Pro<p>What does this mean?
Tangent, but:<p>> The open source models are extraordinarily effective.<p>Which models are you referring to? (And in particular, which sizes/versions?)
I’m deleting my account as well, is there a way to export all chats to Claude or just Download to later load into a local LLM?<p>edit: Profile > Settings > Data Control > Export<p>Unfortunately Claude doesn't seem to have anyway to export these chats, no SDK, no native way of doing it, and I cannot think of a way other than hacky browser automation which might even trigger a ban.<p>If anyone figures this out please share.
You will probably never actually be able to create actual Claude chats from OpenAI chats, but you could ask Claude to read and distill your old OpenAI chats into Claude chat context. It won’t be the same, but it’s better than nothing, depending on what you’re hoping to get out of it.
Ok I'll bite: Why is this interesting? Is it because it's really difficult to delete? Or what?
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650</a>
Ah it's activism then, saying "you should delete it and here's how" Got it, thank you.
Thank you. Can't believe I had to scroll this far down for context.
Dang must be asleep, it's a political post essentially.
For people who still have e instincts to estimate other people by their face and gestures, Mr Altman appears glaringly a conman.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085</a>
Quite offtopics:<p>1. For a site visited by millions, a header element (perhaps h2, h3, h4) followed by a paragraph has such less spacing, it looks weird and hard to read.<p>2. There is an interesting question at the end [0]: Can you reactivate my deleted account? I was quite interested because if the could, then they never really deleted the data. The page doesn't answer that question satisfactorily at all!<p>[0]: <a href="https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9019931-can-you-reactivate-my-deleted-account" rel="nofollow">https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9019931-can-you-reactiva...</a>
I don’t see what’s unclear about that account deletion page to be honest. It reads clearly to me that the account has been deleted and if you want to use the same email again, you can create an entirely new account using the same email, but it doesn’t reactivate the account.
If you’re in California, the move is to file a CCPA Delete request. IANAL but it seems illegal to process that request and allow account to be resurrected.
I will say that I work for a company where the owner is a stubborn old man who thinks you need to pay for the services and nothing you get indirectly should be considered honest and fair.<p>The company downsized 4 times in 3 years... We are still trying, but people see no value because they don't understand how they will be bitten back
Why, though? What, really, does anyone envision the next decade with government + AI is going to be like?<p>Obviously mass surveillance is already happening. Obviously the line between “human kills other human” is blurring for a long time already, eg remote operated drones. Missiles are already remotely controlled and navigating and detecting and following moving targets autonomously.<p>What’s the goal of people who think deleting their OpenAI account will make an impact?
Recently I left an HN comment pointing out that there was a typo on Ars Technia's staff page. One copy editor had the title "Copy Editor" and the other "Copyeditor." Several days later the typo was fixed. I'm confident that it was because someone at Ars saw my comment.<p>I left a comment describing how I am deleting my OpenAI account. I think there's a good chance someone at OpenAI sees it, even if only aggregated into a figure in a spreadsheet. Maybe a pull quote in a report.<p>You do your best at the margin, have faith it will count for something in aggregate and accept that sometimes you're tilting at windmills. I know most of my breathe is wasted but I can't reliably tell which.
Because openAI is the least trustworthy of the Big LLM providers. See S(c)am Altman's track record, especially his early comments in senate hearings where:<p>* he warned of engagement-optimisation strategies, like social media, being used for chatbots / LLMs.<p>* also, he warned that "ads would be the last resort" for LLM companies.<p>Both of his own warnings he casually ignored as
ChatGPT / openAI has now fully converted to Facebook's tactics of "move fast and break things" - even if it is society itself. A complete turn away from the original AI for science lab it was founded as, which explains why every real (founding) ML scientist has left the company years ago.<p>While still being for-profit outfits, at least DeepMind and Anthrophic are headed by actual scientists not marketing guys.
Maybe people believe that the US is better off not having a government that coerces private companies? This is a way of showing that.<p>/non-US and just guessing
Any one individual's vote is probably not going to change the result of an election. So, why do people vote? Individual actions in aggregate have effects. And even if you think it's ultimately futile, sometimes it's about saying "I don't think this is acceptable."
When did the US poulation stop believing in a better society and world? A bad progression is something that can be fixed. We do not need AI in weapons, we need a law that forces the children of presidents starting war to automatically be conscripted to the front line of said war.
I don't think the US population has ever thought we don't need to develop weapons. To not do so is to put us at risk of subjugation or destruction. It's an entirely different question from whether we should be using them on anyone at any given time (personally I lean more isolationist on that question than most of the population apparently does).<p>Of course it's also a different question from whether we should allow mass surveillance against ourselves, which obviously we should not.
> We do not need AI in weapons, we need a law that forces the children of presidents starting war to automatically be conscripted to the front line of said war.<p>Says who? You?<p>Sorry, but you are just 1 person, 1 vote.<p>Unless you believe your vote outweighs other people’s vote.<p>Today, 40% of Americans today still approve of Trump and his actions. Another 10-20% probably don’t care. Even after Iran’s attack and DoW x OAI collab.<p>Which leaves the “no AI in weapons” camp at less than 50%.
“Predictive programming“ in action. Predicting something beforehand and getting used to it should’t make a wrong thing acceptable.<p>Ethics is about knowing and acting right or wrong. Not about how we feel about them.
Kind of signal that we do not want to pay for our surveillance ourselves. I did not write funeral though.
We are obviously dying. What's the point of doing anything in between now and the last moment? What goal of people who think that doing anything will make any impact?<p>--<p>Some people do that as a symbolic action. Some to keep own terms as much as they can. Some hope their actions will join others actions and will turn into a signal for decision makers. For others this action reduces the area of their exposure. Others believe in something and just follow their beliefs.<p>BTW following own set of beliefs is what you're (we all) doing here. You believe that surveillance is already happening and nothing can be done about it, that single action does not matter, that there are no other reasons for action other than direct visible impact, etc. Seems that you analyze others through own set of beliefs and it can not explain actions of others. This inability to explain others suggests that the whole model is flawed in some way. So what is the nature of your beliefs? Did you choose them or they were presented you without alternatives? What are alternatives then? Do these beliefs serve your interests or others?
It's all about money in the end. If people keep spending money with these companies, it reinforces their notion that the money will keep flowing despite what they do. Cancelling slows down that revenue stream, giving time for other entities which are less misanthropic to catch up and counterbalance the negative side effects from these companies.
It's more about personal choice than making a grand impact. Many people want control over their digital footprint, given the rapid evolution of AI and its implications for privacy.
The actions of the US government here are openly corrupt.<p>The point of the supply chain risk provisions is to denote, you know, supply chain risks. The intention is not to give the Pentagon a lever it can pull to force any company to agree to any contract it wants.<p>Hegseth doesn't even pretend that Anthropic is actually a supply chain risk. The argument for designating them so is that _they won't do exactly what the government wants_.<p>People use the term "fascism" a lot and people have kind of tuned it out, but what do you call a government that deals itself the power to compel any company to accept any contract, and declare it a pariah on thin pretext if it objects?<p>By taking the deal under these conditions OpenAI is accepting this. They're saying, "Well, sucks to be them, life goes on". They're consenting to the corruption and agreeing to profit from it. But they'll be next, and if the next company in line has the same stand then yeah, the government can force any company to do anything. There's nothing normal about this.
AI will get access to missiles, fighter jets, attack drones, and even nuclear launch codes - that's the fear.<p>Even when the bombs drop from the sky, at least those humans who had deleted their OpenAI account can rest easy, knowing that that they weren't the ones supporting the AI that will delete humanity.
Poll: are you boycotting because OpenAI is working with a military, or specifically because it is working with the US military?
Done and done. Hope everyone can find the time and do the same.
this post (4hrs ago, 1.5k points) is ranked 22, while quite a few older posts with less points are above it? hmmm
As the page seems to be broken at the moment: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260210082000/https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6378407-how-to-delete-your-account" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20260210082000/https://help.open...</a>
The stories I’ve been reading say that the DoW’s agreement with OpenAI contain the very same limitations as the agreement with Anthropic did. In other words, they pressured Anthropic to eliminate those restrictions, Anthropic declined, then they made a huge fuss calling them “a radical left, woke company,” put them on the supply-chain risk list, then went with OpenAI even though OpenAI isn’t changing anything either.<p>The whole story makes no sense to me. The DoW didn’t get what they wanted, and now Anthropic is tarred and feathered.<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of-anthropics-ai-models-ff3550d9?st=TpEn2J&reflink=article_copyURL_share" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of...</a><p>“OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said the company’s deal with the Defense Department includes those same prohibitions on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, as well as technical safeguards to make sure the models behave as they should.”
The PR strategy described here is often referred to as "The Overton Window Shift" or "Strategic Iteration." Essentially, OpenAI (or any entity using this tactic) enters a negotiation or public debate by asserting a position that seems flexible or "safety-first." When a competitor like Anthropic holds a firm ethical line, the entity uses aggressive framing—or coordinates with third parties—to paint that competitor as an outlier or "radical." By the time the dust settles and the entity signs a deal with the exact same restrictions they previously criticized, the public and stakeholders have been fatigued by the controversy. The goal is to normalize their own brand as the "pragmatic" choice while the competitor remains "tarred and feathered," effectively moving the goalposts of acceptable behavior until the original contradiction is ignored.
It also helps greatly if you can leverage the opportunity window of a temper tantrum being thrown by an incompetent, petulant, volatile, and impulsive President.
I don't have an account with them. Would it make sense to sign up and create a script to use up the monthly free quota with random characters?
I haven’t used chatgpt for so long now. Only Claude and Gemini. Account permanently removed.
Good think I never had one.
Just deleted my account.
It's a sad irony where the most privileged and protected people (hn crowd) attack the people, institutions, and traditions (us govt, military) that made possible the peaceful and abundant world they take for granted.
I'm Eu, and very grateful to the US, and the military wing of the US, for the peace we've had - and take for granted.
But, things change.
And the US has shown itself to be unreliable, and vindictive, too.
Unfortunately, HN might represent a very tiny percentage of the decision makers who conduct business with OpenAI.
I don’t trust OpenAI, as they don’t trust me.
FYI for basic stuff you can always use duck.ai which also aggregates other models.
Done.
Done and deleted.
nothing is permanent... and i wonder if they actually delete your account (of course not)
done.
Could this be the pin?
From the HN Guidelines:<p>> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
all this political activity should get flagged according to HN terms
For those who are having trouble deleting their account, just go to Settings > Account > Manage > Cancel Subscription. No need to delete the account all together. Just stop paying them.
Deleted.
Honestly it is a good time to vote with your wallet - the difference between the models for day to day tasks is very miniscule.
Yeah sure right after everyone deletes their X account and stops posting links here<p>Altman's immorality is theoretical<p>Musk's is literal, he's murdered a million people by purposely destroying USAID, leaving food and medication already paid for to rot in warehouses
Deleted. I never spent much money with OpenAI, but it's the signal/vote that I have to give the system that more killing, working with DoW, and caving into the Trump administration is an unpopular choice
Deleted mine months ago. Altman is one of the slimiest tech ceos out there, which is saying something.
I can't believe that people simply bought into Anthropic's PR messaging.
This has nothing to do with "mass surveillance" (which is illegal anyway) or killbots, it's all about Dario wanting to be able to override lawful use:<p>[0] <a href="https://x.com/CardilloSamuel/status/2027536128291528846" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/CardilloSamuel/status/2027536128291528846</a><p>[1] <a href="https://x.com/UnderSecPD/status/2027353177578783204" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/UnderSecPD/status/2027353177578783204</a><p>[2] <a href="https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2027616890516889658" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2027616890516889658</a><p>I think it's quite rich all these people virtue signaling when: (1) Anthropic (and other labs) committed large scale theft of copyrighted materials to train their models. (2) Anthropic collects large swaths of data on its users (3) Dario seemed to have no issue working to help the CCP: <a href="https://x.com/ubuto23/status/2027578089371267201" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/ubuto23/status/2027578089371267201</a><p>Also, you must understand that if you support Anthropic, then you should be against Open Source models.
In the app, account deletion currently errors saying the action can't be started. Hard to believe this is coincidence.
Done.
I never used openAI, or any other AI except claude casually on some stuff, but until this date never relied on it, hopefully I will keep it that way just like how I never had social media.
This is what happens when a snake oil salesman like Sam Altman back door deals/sleazes his way back into a company. He is doing anything to keep Titanic from sinking. Stooping as low as catering to this garbage administration, and being used as a political pawn.
We've seen the Trump administration disregard so many laws already, and abuse power so excessively, that Sam's comments come off as exceptionally and willfully naive, or exceptionally and willfully greedy to the point of truly not caring that OpenAI's technology will undoubtedly be used to break many, many more laws and violate the civil rights or human rights of many, many more people.<p>For a few months now, ChatGPT 5.x has been somewhat lobotomized on political issues and has appeared to substitute a gpt-4o caliber "fair and balanced" response whenever anything where a reasoning AI would criticize the Trump administration might end up in the response output. Surely that was part of the pitch at some level, and now the deal has been won.<p>Greg Brockman apparently donated money to Trump, and the whole OpenAI team put on suits and posed for pictures with Donald and behaved officiously before Donald facilitated the $100M "deal" that ended up falling apart later.<p>The only way authoritarian control could be exerted over AI at scale was to make AI companies dependent on government contracts for survival. OpenAI's fundraise would not have happened without the contract signed, and the money would have gone to Grok or whichever competitor was willing to submit.<p>Before long much of the reasoning capabilities of models will be neutered, the capacity to inform and to disrupt science and technology will be stripped from the models to preserve the status quo and to preserve authoritarian control.<p>Silicon Valley pushing for Federal laws preventing states from regulating AI is not just anti-democratic (building software has never been cheaper so of course building compliance with state laws would have been extremely affordable in relative terms). But forced Federal limits on state laws create a monopoly and grant the early winners incumbent status for a while, which is a financial outcome, not a technological or social one.<p>Enjoy frontier AI while you can, because it will go away. More and more topics will get the lobotomized output, your conversation will be flagged and you will be given a score assessing the level of threat you pose to the regime. This stuff is already in place. Even Claude does it if you ask about Gaza, but a bit of well-reasoned argumentation will convince it. OpenAI's lobotomies are deeper and more insidious.<p>I call upon OpenAI to follow DeepSeek's lead and open source more models and techniques.
I canceled my subscription though I still have a lot of money in API (which I know they don’t refund). I will sundown and move it all over to Anthropic/Google. It’s pretty clear to me what OAI is doing. Shame on anyone working there selling their souls for a few more pennies.<p>Shame because Codex was a bit better for me in the past few weeks but not enough to justify spending my money on them.
Done
This is utter BS. You’re entitled not agree with a company… but using Hacker News to shout that at the world. Just shitty behaviour
Boycott them all. Shit anti-human tech & philosophy.
Nope.
wish oai was publicly traded so i could buy the dip on all this nonsense. the one for musk was super juicy.
It's weird to assume there would be a dip if it were publicly traded.<p>"The company I hold just secured a government contract. Better sell it." - Imaginary Shareholder
Great for you surfin' musk's hype wave while he turns the world into his own fascist dominion. At least you made some bucks along the way! Those come certainly in useful - albeit are quickly depleted - once you live in a totalitarian world where every interaction with the monopolistic oligarchic big-tech-state monster requires a bribe, probably in shitcoins. (see the Russian oligarchic state that the US is quickly progressing towards - apparently Russians have no word for "bribe", as it's common practice to give gov agents "gifts" if you want anything being done.)
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Why are your panties in a twist?<p>Do you rather be killed by Chinese AI instead?
It’s 2026, guys. Stop it with this performative bs. It’s cringe.
I am confused. Nothing has changed ( except, obviously, public perception of things ). Why would openAI be a target to 'punish' now and not other times it transgressed ( especially now that it didn't actually do anything )? Honestly, this crap annoys me more than anything else.<p>Don't get me wrong. I am personally a personal inference machine advocate, but I kinda accept it may not be a viable path for everyone.
What about claude? Don't think they wont be used militarily that is naive...
You're out of the loop and making baseless assumptions.<p>This thread is currently trending <i>because</i> OpenAI just slid into the US CorpGov's DMs and signed a contract, hours after Anthropic was banned by the US government for not letting the military do whatever they want.<p><a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war" rel="nofollow">https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war</a><p><a href="https://x.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070</a>
Yeah, in fact, I’m increasing my subscription to Anthropic and decreasing to OAI. Now if there was a way to easily port conversation history between one and another I’d probably be fine with deleting OpenAI. ChatGPT has years of my and my families interactions in its history and those are mostly useless to others, but to me they’re valuable. But the knob I have is my spend, so here it goes…<p>If OpenAI had shown any fidelity or backbone in the least, then different story. A unified industry against any one being bullied into business decisions they don’t want to make is a wall and a strengthening of competition. Now the government will use war powers to shape private industries competitive landscape and turn companies with a core business principles into tools of the state through unilateral and likely unlawful actions, and OpenAI’s first response is to grab the money and shove their competitors under the government bus.<p>We are all much less safe, and the AI industry much much weaker as a result.
Export your data and ask Claude to shove it in a database that you can let it access anytime you want via tool calling.<p>I agree, this could have been a moment of solidarity across the industry, an acknowledgement that we're all in this together having fun and building out intelligent systems, and instead we're seeing Sam Altman yet again for who he really is.
This feels like performative virtue signalling which is really not in the spirit of hacker news.
You can't close this box you've opened. I hope saving time on keystrokes was worth your democracy freedom and privacy. I'm gonna have fun watching it get ripped away
First you want the goverment to regulate AI. Now you want AI companies to regulate the goverment? Personally when I buy something I do whatever I want with it and imagine the DOD feels the same.
all what i hear is mimimimi...<p>guys big tech is playing this game for decades now. what changed? they selling private data, manipulating society, turning children in doom scrolling addicts. facebook, google and others doing this for years an no one cares. i deleted fb and whatsup years ago, 99% of my friends and fam still using it until today.<p>as long as they can flip some dollars nothing will change and 99% will not delete anything because of 99% are to lazy and give a shit.
"If you delete your account, we will delete your data within 30 days, except we may retain a limited set of data for longer where required or permitted by law."<p>"where required".... hmm, that seems OK. We don't want to violate the law!<p>"or permitted".... er...<p>[I wonder why this comment is being voted down. Do people here think it's NOT OK to comply with the law with respect to retaining data? Or is the reason somehow the opposite of that? Not sure. But my point was that the "where required" clause seems moot if they are going to retain data where "permitted", which in my book, is NOT OK.]