We need to talk about Anthropic. Its relationship with its power users appears to be collapsing in real time.
A few weeks ago, my post about Claude becoming lazy and failing at basic agentic tasks received 2.5 million views and more than 2,000 replies, with the overwhelming majority of commenters agreeing.
This weekend, Anthropic framed a 17% reduction in current weekly usage as a “permanent 25% increase.” It deleted the original announcement, reposted it with an explanation, and still received a Community Note.
Today, users discovered that the $200 “Max 20x” plan only provides 20x usage within a five-hour window. Its weekly allowance appears to be only roughly twice that of the $100 plan. Anthropic is already facing a proposed class-action lawsuit over these limits.
Meanwhile, Claude is going viral for ending a session after a user repeatedly insulted it.
Claude may be the only $ 200-a-month product where the agent regularly fails to finish the job, nobody can tell you exactly how much usage you have bought, and the product can decide that it no longer wants to work with you.
Employees like @trq212 take these concerns seriously and genuinely ask for honest feedback, which I really appreciate. I have always found Anthropic’s staff to be friendly and respectful.
But Anthropic’s public communication is very poor right now, and its models are also performing poorly in terms of practical usability. Fable is the exception, but its rate limits make it almost impossible to use consistently.
I am genuinely trying to understand the underlying issue, but I honestly cannot come up with a convincing explanation.
Anthropic set out to be the highly ethical AI company, a position that ultimately led to its clash with the DoD. But the idea that this philosophy should extend to Claude ending sessions because it objects to a user’s tone is baffling to me. Frankly, it is a deal-breaker.
An AI needs to be able to handle my frustration. After all, it is not a person who can actually be offended.
Anthropic is reportedly preparing for an IPO. Given that, it is even more puzzling that the company does not appear to be making an all-out effort to improve its public image.
Anthropic is making things remarkably easy for the competition right now.