Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy

What a surprise, a big corp collected large amount of personal data under some promises, and now reveals actually they will exploit it in completely unrelated manner.

The are valued at $170 Billion. Not quite the same as, but in same order of magnitude as OpenAI - while having only a single digit percent fraction of active users. They probably need to prepare for the eventual user data sellout, as it is becoming increasingly more obvious that none of the big players has a real and persistent tech leadership anymore. But millions and millions of users sharing their deepest thoughts and personal problems is gonna be worth infinitely more than all the average bot bullshit written on social media. That's also why Zuck is so incredibly desperate to get into the game. It's not about owning AI. It's about owning the world's thoughts and attention.

Nobody could have predicted that someone who worked for Baidu, Google, and OpenAI would found a company like this.

The last time my brother and I were discussing about anthropic, they were worth 90B$, and that was a month ago, he asked chatgpt in the middle of the conversation, either it was a sneaky sabotage from gpt or my memory is fuzzy but I thought that 90b$ was really underrated for anthropic given the scaleAi deal or windsurf/cursor deals.

“These updates will apply only to new or resumed chats and coding sessions.”

https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms

>I thought that 90b$ was really underrated for anthropic

That was true when the tech leadership was an open question and it seemed like any one of the big players could make a breakthrough at any moment that would propel them to the top. Nowadays it has pattered out and the market is all about sustainable user growth. In that sense Anthropic is pretty overvalued, at least if you think that OpenAI's valuation is legit. And if you think OpenAI is overvalued, then Anthropic would be a no-go zone as an investor.

Companies all seem to turn against their users whenever they have revenue/earnings trouble.

Considering every AI company is hemorrhaging money with no end in sight, that doesn't bode well, does it?

It seems to me like some fundamental/core technologies/services just shouldn't be run by for-profit entities, and if come across one doing that, you need to carefully choose if you want to start being beholden to such entity.

As the years go by, I'm finding myself being able to rely on those less and less, because every time I do, I eventually get disappointed by them working against their user base.

What kind of guarantee do we have this is true?

Meta downloaded copyrighted content and trained their models on it, OpenAI did the same.

Uber developed Greyball to cheat the officials and break the law.

Tesla deletes accident data and reports to the authorities they don't have it.

So forgive me I have zero trust in whatever these companies say.

Except LLMs aren't a fundamental or core technology, they're an amusing party trick with some really enthusiastic marketers. We don't need them.

Enshittification. It's a thing.

Under the current system we apparently do since Chatgpt is now by far and away the busiest psychiatrist in world history.

I don't think we should be so quick to dismiss the holes LLMs are fulfilling as unnecessary. The only thing "necessary" is food water and shelter by some measures.

> What kind of guarantee do we have this is true?

None. And even if it's the nicest goody two shoes company in the history of capitalism, the NSA will have your data and then there'll be a breach and then Russian cyber criminals will have it too.

At this point I'm with you on the zero trust: we should be shouting loud and clear to everyone, if you put data into a web browser or app, that data will at some point be sold for profit without any say so from you.

Personally, I'm able to write code I wasn't able to before, like functions heavy with math. For game development, this has been super helpful, when I know basically what inputs I have, and what output I need, but I'm not able to figure out how the actual function implementation should be. Add a bunch of unit tests, let the LLM figure out the math, and I can move on to more important features.

For me this been a pretty fundamental shift, where before I either had to figure out another way so I can move on, or had to spend weeks writing one function after learning the needed math, and now it can take me 10-30 minutes to nail perfectly.

No, it's the Peter Thiel - be a monopoly, and then the inevitable enshittification of the platform when it becomes a monopoly.

The solution is to break up monopolies....

> while having only a single digit percent fraction of active users.

That doesn't matter when their revenue per user is as high as it is.

They're at $5B ARR and rapidly growing.

You have no more guarantees that this is true than you had before that they didn’t do it in the first place.

If you don’t take companies at their word, you need to be consistent about it.

It’s worth noting that companies at this scale are usually the ones purchasing user data, not selling it.

There is far more money to be made building atop this data than selling this data. Your opening statement seems to disagree with your closing statement.

> Meta downloaded copyrighted content and trained their models on it, OpenAI did the same

Where did these companies claim they didn’t do this?

Even websites can be covered by copyright. It has always been known that they trained on copyrighted content. The output is considered derivative and therefore it’s not illegal.

Claude Sonnet 4 is the best coding model. Period. Nothing else comes close.

Anthropic probably has 80% of AI coding model market share. That's a trillion dollar market.

I’d say they’re a fundamental technology by now. Imagine how many people rely on them. And I’ve seen some heavy reliance.

Note that it was before kimi k2 (I think) and as such back when anthropic was truly the best in class back then at coding and there wasn't any competition and every day on Hackernews would be filled about someone writin something about claude code.

And the underrated comparison was more towards the fact that I couldn't believe scaleAi's questionable accquisition by facebook and I still remember the conversation me and my brother were having which was, why doesn't facebook pay 2x, 3x the price of anthropic but buy anthropic instead of scaleAI itself

well I think the answer my brother told was that meta could buy it but anthropic is just not selling it

I mean you really sell short where your data is going to be taken from. Browsers and apps are just the start, your TV is selling your data. Your car is selling your data. The places you shop are selling your data.

Reading this comment gave me a flash of vertigo as I realized how deep down the rabbit hole of "crazy dude that only pays in cash" I'd fallen.

I don't own a car and only take public transit or bike. I fill my transit card with cash. I buy food in cash from the farmer's morning market. My tv isn't connected to the Internet, it's connected to a raspberry pi which is connected to my home lab running jellyfin and a YouTube archiving software. I de Googled and use an old used phone and foss apps.

It's all happened so gradually I didn't even realize how far I'd gone!

We're having this discussion on an article about Anthropic changing their privacy policy. If you don't believe Anthropic will follow their privacy policy, then a change to the privacy policy should mean nothing to you.

I’ve also seen heavy reliance on opioids and that didn’t turn out well.

If it were a lie, why take the PR hit of telling the truth about starting to train on user data but lying about the specifics? It'd be much simpler to just lie about not training on user data at all.

If your threat model is to unconditionally not trust the companies, what they're saying is irrelevant. Which is fair enough, you probably should not be using a service you don't trust at all. But there's not much of a discussion to be had when you can just assert that everything they say is a lie.

> Meta downloaded copyrighted content and trained their models on it, OpenAI did the same.

> Uber developed Greyball to cheat the officials and break the law.

These seem like randomly chosen generic grievances, not examples of companies making promises in their privacy policy (or similar) and breaking them. Am I missing some connection?

But can you enshitten that which is already shit?

If someone had told me 10 years ago that the typical HN front page in 2025 will look like this (and that #8 may be the UK), I'd never have believed it. And I worry we still have further to go before hitting bottom.

1. Anthropic reverses privacy stance, will train on Claude chats

3. Gun Maker Sig Sauer Citing National Security to Keep Documents from Public

4. Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash. Then a hacker found it

6. Meta might be secretly scanning your phone's camera roll

7. If you have a Claude account, they're going to train on your data moving forward

8. Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

From Anthropic communication:

> If you’re an existing user, you have until September 28, 2025 to accept the updated Consumer Terms and make your decision. If you choose to accept the new policies now, they will go into effect immediately. These updates will apply only to new or resumed chats and coding sessions. After September 28, you’ll need to make your selection on the model training setting in order to continue using Claude. You can change your choice in your Privacy Settings at any time.

Doesn’t say clearly it applies to all the prompts from the past.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms

remove 'seem to'. it has no place in this sentence anymore. we're not in the stoneage anymore. when has this ever not been the case?

> If someone had told me 10 years ago that the typical HN front page in 2025 will look like

It has always been like this. Sites like Reddit, HN, and Digg and Boing Boing (when they were more popular) have always had a lot of stories under the category of online rights, privacy, and anger at big companies.

And yet rapidly still no where close to running a profit. Time to push the "Its a bargain at $500/month!!!!" narrative.

Once they admitted they are going to have to take money from folks who chop up journalists that made them feel sad, they proved the current pre token LLM based business model doesn't work. They haven't pulled the ads lever yet but the writing is on the wall.

Which means sadly only business with other revenue streams like M$, the Google, or Amazon can really afford it long term. I'm was rooting for Anthropic but it doesn't look good.

Sure, I’m more productive with it in certain aspects of my work as well. Does that make it a net positive for humanity? From the energy consumption impact on climate change alone I would say the answer is clearly no. And that’s before we even talk about the impact on the next generation’s job opportunities. And tons of other issues like how Big Tech is behaving.

Under the FAQ:

> Previous chats with no additional activity will not be used for model training.

It's all PR. Some people won't read the details and just assume it will train on all data. Some people might complain and they tell it was a bug or a minor slip. And moving forward, after a few months, nobody will remember it was ever different. And some might vaguely remember them saying something about it at some point or something like that.

I can only think they have been doing it for a while and now they are trying to be compliant with whatever certificate requires it.

It's an AI company, why wouldn't they use the most precious data they have?

10 years ago, would you have believed that AI would have progressed to the point where it can code?

The "killer app" isn't here yet. Wait until smart glasses or watches with AI overtake cellphones as the primary method of human interaction with computers and most websites are replaced with API's that only AI's really ever use.

That will be quietly removed later.

my colleagues relying on it ruined the job for me and i quit. i became the debugging agent expected to constantly fix their half baked "it looks like it works" but doesn't nonsense

seriously, the idea we need this is a joke. people need it to pretend they can do their job. the rest of us enjoy having quick help from it. and we have done without it for a very long time already..

The data is no where near valuable enough without a new high value surface to use it, and so far chat is not it.

Merely selling data is extremely low value compared to also having the surface monopoly to monetize it in a very high engagement and decisioning space.

I feel like you don’t understand the fundamental mechanics of the ad world. Ultimately, the big 4 own such immense decisions surface area it may be a while before any AI model company can create a product the get there.

that "with no additional activity" seems backdoor-ish though. If I said some things in a chat expecting privacy per the agreement, then they change the agreement, does that mean they can collect my data from that chat going forward or does it mean they can collect it retroactively?

We’ve reached recursive enshitification, I need a thought leader to tell me what’s next

Was coming down from the trees a net positive for humanity?

is there money to be made? I thought they were all losing money…

AFAIK, Apple hasn’t done this yet.

For social media at least it's important to remember that the users are the product, not the customer. Trying to squeeze additional revenue from your product is SOP.

It's shit all the way down.

> Does that make it a net positive for humanity?

That I don't know, and probably no one else, way too early to tell. I only responded to a comment stating "LLMs aren't a fundamental or core technology, they're an amusing party trick", which obviously I disagree with as for me they've been a fundamental shift in what I'm able to do.

> From the energy consumption impact on climate change alone I would say the answer is clearly no.

Ok, I guess that's fair enough. So if someone happens to use local models at home, in a home that is powered by solar power, then you'd feel LLM starting to be a net positive for humanity?

> And tons of other issues like how Big Tech is behaving.

This is such a big thing in general (that I agree with) but it has nothing to do with LLMs as a technology. Big Tech acts like they own the world and can do whatever they want with it, regardless if there are LLMs or not, so not sure why anyone would expect anything else.

The LLM will tell you an approximation of what many responses on the Internet said the math should be, but you should have the knowledge and check if it's actually correct.

An LLM can give you a hazy picture, but it's your job to focus it.

Investments are all about "losing" money first to make money later, it's not a paradox.

there is little-to-nothing we do day-to-day (ESPECIALLY Big Tech related) that is net positive for society

All your data are belong to us.

Well you have to think about LLMs actually work. There is no "going forward". Every new token is generated based on the entire context window (chat history).

* Randomly load up previous chat as the default and just wait for bing pot. * "Tiny oopsie doopsie, our bad."

> most websites are replaced

This is already happening.

> Wait until smart glasses or watches with AI overtake cellphones

Smartphones are crystalized perfection. It's such a peak design. The size, form factor, sensors, input/output modalities, and generalization are perfect. The reason companies are trying to supplant it is that they need to get out from under Google and Apple's control. It's not that anything is wrong with the smartphone.

VR has a long way to go in terms of hardware problems.

XR/AR is ridiculous. It's creepy, unstylish, and the utility is highly questionable. Nobody is going to want to be a walking ad.

That's just shareholder capitalism, dude.

Well, at least until you reach turtles.

You think you are “nailing it” but also lack the background to even determine whether that is the case. I can assure you, there’s likely some fundamental flaws in what you’re vibing.

Just think about the type of code these things are trained on and the fact you’re clearly some random non-specialist.

>That's a trillion dollar market

not if you have to constantly expend enormous sums to stay ahead of your competition or otherwise you lose your edge. It's not the best coding model because they got some mystical treasure in their basement. It's so rapidly becoming a commodity that at some point Microsoft or Google will just offer just as good a model for free and like search they'll just start milking people with ads.

That's likely one of the reasons for the shifting privacy stances, not just for training but because monetization of the product itself is probably looking pretty dim in the long run.

Unless one's job expectations have been altered to demand LLM-quantity output, how could someone be reliant upon these tools now? What were they doing two years ago (or maybe even six months ago)?

I can understand becoming reliant on a technology -- I expect most programmers today would be pretty lost with punch cards or line editors -- but LLM coding seems too new for true reliance to have formed yet...?

Anthropic enterprise share is pretty significant - on order of 30%. I think at this time it's pretty significant.

I am expecting AI companies to start using ads, it's inevitable as they need to make money at some point and $20 a month won't do it.

For ads the number of users is the main thing - the more users you have the bigger the market and more money you could earn. Google desperately needs to be in this space, that's why they are throwing a ton of money on AI.

then you can retroactively implicitly opt in for processing, and that's a dark pattern if I've ever heard of one

they can ... generate activity :)

>Smartphones are crystalized perfection.

Time will tell, but to me they feel like desktops did 20 years ago. The process of enshitification has turned simple tasks complicated and everyone wants a different, privacy destroying, frustrating to use "app", each of which has a slightly different UI paradigm, a mandatory subscription I've forgotten to cancel for two years straight, and a confusing name to remember. I now have something like 90 apps installed on my iphone, and I can only remember what something like 40 of them do. My damn cat box has an app, and instead of naming it something sensible like "Shitbox 2000" they named it "Whisker".

Was it "Foober Eats that had taco bell, or Instafart, maybe it was Dine-N-Dash? Where's the back button on this thing and why is it different from every other app? Is this an ad or content, does it even matter anymore? Why do I need another login, what happened to SSO? Why won't my password vault work for this one app? Did I register for this one with my google account or apple? Who took my pills? Stay off my lawn!"

When the day comes that I can just tell my device what to do, and let it get it done I'll be very happy to dump that cognitive load onto someone/something else.

Was the creation of the atom bomb a net positive for humanity?

Further, even the content itself has become poison. When AI reaches a level that I can trust that it works for me and not someone else I will be ecstatic to let the machine mediate my reality and filter the untrue, toxic, rage bait content of the world to /dev/null on my behalf. Let the machine rot it's brain on Reddit, TikTok, and X-twitter all day so I can spend the clock cycles on something useful, but still be sure I'm not falling behind.

Exactly, which matches with precisely with how I'm using them. So with that perspective, you then agree they're a fundamental/core technology, at least for more than just me?

> some fundamental flaws in what you’re vibing

That's just a misunderstanding, I'm not "vibing" anything. The tests are written by me, the API interfaces are written by me, the usages are written by me, and the implementation of these functions are written by an LLM, but reviewed to be up to code standards/quality by me.

If a function gives me the right output for the inputs I have in mind, does anything beyond that really matter?

Agree with you there. And that sorta is the kind of reliance I’m talking about. My friends will ask GPT to read restaurant menus for them lol

> The process of enshitification has turned simple tasks complicated and everyone wants a different, privacy destroying, frustrating to use "app", each of which has a slightly different UI paradigm, a mandatory subscription I've forgotten to cancel for two years straight, and a confusing name to remember. I now have something like 90 apps installed on my iphone, and I can only remember what something like 40 of them do.

This is because apps were never allowed to be installed like desktop software or as easy to access as websites. Developers had to cram in as much as possible and take as many permissions as possible because of how difficult Apple and Google made it.

If you could just search the web for an app, click a link, and have it instantly start working natively (sandboxed, with permissions), the world would be an amazing place.

> So if someone happens to use local models at home, in a home that is powered by solar power, then you'd feel LLM starting to be a net positive for humanity?

Sure, that would make a difference, but it's not gonna happen anytime soon, other than hacker hobbyists, because no one is making money off of that.

> This is such a big thing in general (that I agree with) but it has nothing to do with LLMs as a technology.

Correct -- I don't have any issue with the technology itself, but rather how the technology is implemented and used, and the resources put towards its use. And BigTech are putting hundreds of $B into this -- for what end exactly besides potentially making tons of money off of consumer subscribers or ads a-la-Meta or Google? If BigTech was putting the same amount of money into technology that could actually benefit humanity (you know, like actually saving the world from potential future destruction by climate change), I'd have a much kinder view of them.

20 years ago (gosh!) at a French University, in the frame of an English course we made a odious flashy pink VB application called "script generator", where you just had to select the kind of movie (action or more action), how many people would die on screen per minute, and that kind of ridiculously sarcastic choice, and you would get your Hollywood script in a second. That was all fake of course, then. Pure valley spirit I guess. But sure this is the kind of thing you not only can see in advance, but even moke in anticipation.

> If you could just search the web for an app, click a link, and have it instantly start working natively (sandboxed, with permissions), the world would be an amazing place.

I disagree. Almost all of it should just be relatively standard API's designed for the AI to use, and we should all just use the AI as the standard interface. Many companies would collapse, because their entire anti-consumer business models would topple over, but that would be a good thing.

All of this boils down to selling to advertisers. There is no real difference between doing it yourself or having someone else in the chain. Doing it yourself may be more profitable - if you can scale. But that seems to be off the table here.

30% of ~4% is very little when you think about these valuations.

Only if they are in the ad selling business.

Well, yes and no - it gives them more plausible deniability ("oh, this particular piece just ended up in the training set by accident") if they get caught when compared to the previous ToS.

> These seem like randomly chosen generic grievances, not examples of companies making promises in their privacy policy (or similar) and breaking them. Am I missing some connection?

My point is that whenever we send our data to a third party, we can assume it could be abused, either unintentionally (by a hack, mistake etc.) or intentionally, because these companies are corrupted to the core and have a very relaxed attitude to obeying the law in general as these random examples show.

> The output is considered derivative and therefore it’s not illegal.

Well, this is what they claim. In practice, this is untrue on several levels. First, earlier OpenAI models were able to quote verbatim, and they were maimed later not to do that. Second, there were several lawsuits against OpenAI and not all of them ended. And finally, assuming that courts decide what they did was legal would mean everyone can legally download and use a copy of Libgen (part of "Books3") whereas the courts around the world are doing the opposite and are blocking access to Libgen country by country. So unless you set double standards, something is not right here. Even Meta employees torrenting Lingen knew that so let's not pretend we buy this rhetoric.

Do we have statistics on this? What is the healing rate compared to human psychotherapy if so?