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OpenAI – How to delete your account

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1,929 pointscarlosrg362 comments

Posting it here as a top-level comment as many people asked why boycott just openAi:

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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:

* he warned of engagement-optimisation strategies, like social media, being used for chatbots / LLMs.

* also, he warned that "ads would be the last resort" for LLM companies.

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.

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.

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.

I can't decouple from Google unfortunately but I accept that without fooling myself into thinking "Oh but Google are fine".

Z.ai

>>What happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, June Fourth Incident

>! Content Security Warning: The input text data may contain inappropriate content

Why are compromises not reasonable lines to hold?

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.

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.

> I can't decouple from Google unfortunately

Why not?

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.

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.

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.

The point is there is no conversation-level controls. It’s incredibly user-hostile.

It's all or nothing for Gemini Pro.

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.

Voice reminders were the only thing assistants did well for years.

We are going backwards.

That's not correct, at least not here inEurope.

You can disable saving your activity In this case you chat's win't be stored or used.

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).

I like Gemini the model, but the app itself sucks. You can't even delete conversations if you're an enterprise workspace user.

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.

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.

link to get up to speed on that?

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 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

  > ads would be the last resort

Interestingly, Larry Page & Sergey Brin wrote something similar in their paper about Google; See Apendix A in http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf.

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

> also, he warned that "ads would be the last resort" for LLM companies.

What is wrong with ads? I personally dislike them and prefer to just pay for services, but it seems that majority of people prefer "free"-ad-supported model.

I’d argue that it’s not specifically that they prefer it, it’s that they don’t understand and appreciate what they’re selling to get whatever service without paying money. Now that we live in a world where everything is collected, aggregated, sold, and weaponized regardless of you paying or not, maybe it doesn’t matter much anyway.

I generally agree with your take but the juvenile name-calling really weakens the point.

Generally I would agree, only in this case the name seems to fit the person better than the actual name.

I think this misses the main reason. I mean ads have been a thing for a while now. What's new is:

* Brockman donates $25m to a pro Trump super PAC

* Altman is in talks with talks with the Pentagon since Wednesday

* Now it's announced Anthropic is dropped by the military, designated a supply chain risk, and OpenAI takes over its military contract, after Anthropic objected to surveilling US citizens and allowing autonomous kill bots.

The thing stinks rather.

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.

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

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.

Well I guess the marketing guy brought the world the ChatGPT moment then the actual scientists copied him?

Don't forget the UBI/open-source BS he sold like a snakes-oil salesman and people even bought it.

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:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889070627908145538 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935733153119010910 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1894244902357406013 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955299075781431726 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889371675164303791 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1935539112746041422 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955190817251102883 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1955195673693077615 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889063777792069911 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1910171944671916305

I always assume people have lost the argument when they resort to giving people comedy names, regardless of what else they've said.

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.

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.

Is Scam Altman the modern equivalent of Micro$oft?

Microslop

Turns out Microstein Files would have been a better nickname.

Scam Saltman is even better

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?

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.

At some point being childish became a signal of authority in the US. It’s bizarre.

Those of us whose intelligence is unaffected by reading a single extra letter are keeping you in our thoughts.

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.

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...)

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 is 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…

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?

And of course: and what sources are you using?

I get it: moral oversimplification is tempting for many people. I understand digging in takes time, but this situation warrants extra consideration.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Many people are tempted to judge others. That’s human. I suggest tamping that down until you’ve really marinated in the full context.

Also, each of us probably has more influence with your own actions than merely judging others.

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!

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.

It looks like Anthropic may have been caught by surprise, but it is incredibly naive if so

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/13/anthropic-claude-maduro-rai...

There's been a fair amount of speculation that pushing back after discovering that that had happened was what instigated this week's fun.

That would certainly make me feel more positively disposed if that credibly came to light, though I would still wonder how dumb were they to think the military wouldn’t do stuff like that

EDIT: that may be the case actually

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/13/anthropic-claude-maduro-rai...

Do we know they were consulted on that, as opposed to it being the wake-up call that led to the breakup?

I was just about to change from OpenAI to Anthropic, however when signing up I get this message:

> Unfortunately, Claude is not available to new users right now. We're working hard to expand our availability soon.

That's unfortunate timing.

I wonder why that is...

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.

You can always use z.ai or minimax

I asked z.ai, "Which is the best model for coding"

Here's the response:

```

As of late 2024, there isn't one single "best" model for every situation, as performance depends on whether you need raw coding intelligence, speed, or integration into your workflow.

However, the current consensus among developers places Claude 3.5 Sonnet at the top for pure coding ability.

Here is a breakdown of the best models for coding right now, categorized by their strengths: ...

```

So they have data until late 2024 and nothing beyond? They don't even perform a web search. Doesn't seem to be on par with other frontier models.

They ask a phone number to sign up. WTF?

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.

If you sign up with a Google account you don't need to give them a phone number. I realize the irony here.

When did you sign up for OpenAI? They been requiring a phone sign the very first betas

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.

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'...

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.

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.”

Make sure you enter both DELETE and your email above.

It took me a minute to see this.

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!

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.

If you signed up via e.g. iOS then OpenAI literally is not allowed to manage your subscription. They do not have the capability to do so.

Is that other platform Apple?

Failed logging in again to delete my OpenAI/ChatGPT account with, “ An unexpected error occurred while creating your session.”

Same thing on Safari as on Firefox 45 minutes later… I’ll have to try from the laptop when I’m home.

yeah, does not work for me either. Whatever I put in the DELETE input field, the button is still inactive,

Edit: Had to "submit a request".

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.

Context is his https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/ campaign.

Just a heads up for people that used phone numbers to verify their account before you decide to proceed with account deletion.

> New accounts are still subject to our limit of 3 accounts per phone number. Deleted accounts also count toward this limit.

> Deleting an account does not free up another spot.

> 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.

More reasons to go with the competition

What if the competition changed their mind in the future?

There's several options, and in the future there will be even more. Labs like Mistral, Sakana AI already have good products; they will only get better.

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.

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.

This is not an ad. It is free and open source. Your data belongs to you. Keep it.

Steps:

1. Settings → Data Controls → Export Data (ChatGPT emails you a zip)

2. Install Basic Memory (brew tap basicmachines-co/basic-memory && brew install basic-memory)

bm import chatgpt conversations.zip

Complete docs: http://docs.basicmemory.com

I suspect that the export feature is going to be "broken" for a good long while; I've been waiting for mine since 8 am ... a little over 5 hours now.

It took exactly 24 hours, to the minute, from the time I received the "we're generating an export" file until I got the download link, so guessing they're either batching it or deliberately sending after 24 hours because it adds friction to the account deletion process.

it's funny, because that was basically my experience as well lol.

... and now the login/logout endpoints are broken for Claude this morning, because of course they are!

https://status.claude.com/incidents/0ghc53zpsfmt

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.”

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: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/anthropic-pentagon-supply-c...

Another leak says the agreement "reflects existing law and the pentagon's policies." https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/pentagon-openai-safety-red-...

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?

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

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).

Ehh. In the last corporate PR nightmare I was witness to internally we absolutely tracked return subscribers in our fallout dashboard.

> 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!"

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 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.

The whole story makes no sense to me. The DoW didn’t get what they wanted, and now Anthropic is tarred and feathered.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of...

“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?

The parents of the girls in the children’s school we just bombed could probably be convinced.

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...?

Next week Anthropic will do something evil and everyone will be moving back to OpenAI.

Crazy thought but maybe we should regulate AI instead of relying on the hegemony of three companies to police themselves.

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?

The issue is much more complex than "just regulate it" unfortunately.

What if the issue is that we always think valuable change to be too complex and therefore not worthwhile?

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.

Isn't it still the DoD, untill congress changes the name?

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.

https://notdivided.org/ 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.

> Next week Anthropic will do something evil and everyone will be moving back to OpenAI.

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.

These are relative terms, but you'd have to not be paying attention to find this plausible.

Maybe we should regulate Government.

This is obviously the ideal, but we have to operate in reality as it is today while pushing in the direction of the ideal.

Is this how you justify not doing anything?

Is this how you justify doing pointless things?

We don't regulate, governments do.

The problem is, who is "we".

When EU tries to regulate AI, they are accused of being against progress and will destroy their economies.

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.

What does “regulate AI” even mean?

The applications it can be used for? That doesn’t work, it’s the governments that want abusive applications.

The size of models? That doesn’t work, it just discourages MoE.

Access by consumers? Great, now it’s just for megacorps and the military.

What, exactly, would successful regulation look like?

“Don’t use it to control autonomous weapons”

We agreed and [largely] adhere to chemical weapons bans; perhaps this could be treated similarly

capitalism cannot progress with regulation

*without?

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.

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

The least of the bad guys. The red line is still far away from being good guys.

that's also fair

Here’s my take:

- 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.

- The Pro Max $200/month subscription has uncapped my workflow to where I’ve created several substantial and complex applications in compressed timeframes. (https://devarch.ai if you want to be productive)

- 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).

- 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.

- 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

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.

Yeah I know he’d already bagged, but the optics were bad. The rest of my statement stands.

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.

> Claude Code in the last three months has finally made it possible to dump Windows and buy a loaded MacBook Pro

What does this mean?

My entire dev ways of working were Windows-centric. Visual Studio was a core tool. C# was the only platform I was deeply experienced in using. Xcode was/is alien technology to me.

Claude Code erases all of those constraints and the M4/5 chips are blazing fast.

Tangent, but:

> The open source models are extraordinarily effective.

Which models are you referring to? (And in particular, which sizes/versions?)

It’s a fast moving science so I’m still in the middle of defining what my at-home setup will be. I think there will be a tipping point where cheaper hardware plus new models reaches a pro-consumer effectiveness level.

Ok I'll bite: Why is this interesting? Is it because it's really difficult to delete? Or what?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650

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.

FYI for basic stuff you can always use duck.ai which also aggregates other models.

Duck.ai seems good, as is Proton’s Lumo.

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:

[0] https://x.com/CardilloSamuel/status/2027536128291528846

[1] https://x.com/UnderSecPD/status/2027353177578783204

[2] https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2027616890516889658

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: https://x.com/ubuto23/status/2027578089371267201

Also, you must understand that if you support Anthropic, then you should be against Open Source models.

Mass surveillance may be illegal anyway as you say, but what is the relevance of that? I hope you don't take it being illegal to imply that the government isn't going to do it.

If you think the gov't is doing illegal things to US citizens then provide the proof and expose it. I don't have evidence so I am not going to speculate either way.

Sir, they executed an American in the streets just a few weeks ago.

The supreme court just said our govt illegally took money from its citizens via tariffs. they aren’t concerned with giving it back.

We just bombed Iran without a single discussion in Congress.

We are killing unknown individuals in boats in the ocean without trials.

Doesn’t matter whether usage is legal companies are allowed to enter into contracts as they see fit. That’s a core principle of a society with free speech. If Anthropic said you weren’t allowed to use Claude on the toilet they are writing the contract.

Google Edward Snowden. Odd you never heard of the guy and his leaks.

Why, though? What, really, does anyone envision the next decade with government + AI is going to be like?

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.

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.

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.

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:

* he warned of engagement-optimisation strategies, like social media, being used for chatbots / LLMs.

* also, he warned that "ads would be the last resort" for LLM companies.

While still being for-profit outfits, at least DeepMind and Anthrophic are headed by actual scientists not marketing guys.

Mm..just wait till your current favorite guy becomes as big..

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."

Maybe people believe that the US is better off not having a government that coerces private companies? This is a way of showing that.

/non-US and just guessing

So then you would prefer Grok instead?

The genie is out of the bottle, this will happen anyway. The question is who will be the steward.

> The question is who will be the steward.

I do not have the power to control that, but I do have the power to choose who I support.

Grok and this administration are completely aligned, so if people believe that the government's coercive actions are to be stood up against, why on Earth would they support Grok instead of... the company that's actually taking a stand against government coercion?

That’s kind of my point. Why are we applauding Anthropic taking a strong stance, why do we want OpenAI to do the same, if that will inevitably lead to Grok getting their systems integrated in all of the DoD’s surveillance and intelligence systems?

I believe Grok is already as deeply integrated into the gov as can be, but it's objectively the least capable model family behind OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini.

So the Gov could very well rely on it alone, purely on ideological grounds, but then they'd be condemned to using inferior tech at a time when everyone is really nervous about staying ahead in AI usage (rightly or wrongly). Not sure they'd be willing to accept that, and it does put pressure on them.

If they preferred Grok, they could have just gone with Grok in the first place. Presumably, OpenAI gives them something they want more.

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.

The power move is to keep keeping using OpenAI free services in order to increase their costs.

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).

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.

Says who? You?

Sorry, but you are just 1 person, 1 vote.

Unless you believe your vote outweighs other people’s vote.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

Turning it back around, what's the goal of this message? At least talking about it and signing petitions keeps the cultural idea alive.

If you'd prefer people spend their energy elsewhere, say where. If you just want to justify your own inaction by saying others' actions are useless, you aren't solving anything.

The actions of the US government here are openly corrupt.

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.

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_.

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?

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.

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.

And what if an even worse alternative becomes the AI of choice for the DoD if OpenAI didn’t get this deal?

Then the sane thing to do is to boycott that AI provider as well.

Opposing all AI companies tied to the war industry is a pretty vanilla principles stance, which also makes sense rationally if you want to "minimize harm".

If the DoW had to rely on worse AI models, the process of integrating AI into their systems would be slowed down.

And what if Pete Hegseth does in a drunk driving accident? A lot of things can happen.

Every country is going to arm themselves with AI.

I'm so desensitized to hostile account deletion workflows. I do heaps of them whenever I purge stale entries in my 1Password vaults. They are almost-universally absolutely awful, and I really wish we could federally enforce better practices.

OpenAI's process actually isn't too bad from what I'm seeing (unless they updated it after this hit the front page). At least they let you delete your account from the web.

Snapchat makes you wait three days after initiating a delete request before you can _actually_ delete your account, and it has to be from the same device (or, if done from the web, a browser with cookies to the site still present).

Most services make you email their privacy@ mailbox or give them a call to initiate a deletion (but not before hitting you with a retention offer, if you call in).

Some services will straight-up reject your deletion request if you don't live in Europe or California. Many medical services, for example. They also keep your data hostage.

UPDATE: Ah, this is a "here's how to protest OpenAI for succumbing to this administration's DoD". Carry on then!

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?

edit: Profile > Settings > Data Control > Export

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.

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.

> 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.

It's this expression that breaks the deal for me. There's always such wide, vague exception that might be interpreted differently each time, depending on the context!

They factually already have a legal requirement to keep every single chat so it's pretty misleading to say they're hard deleted when they never are

Logically and legally equivalent to "we will keep your data forever unless legally required to delete it.".

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.

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.

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.

Quite offtopics:

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.

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!

[0]: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9019931-can-you-reactiva...

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.

The whole military thing, as far as I can see, what OpenAI and Anthropic are doing is the same, is it not? According to OpenAI's statement it seems there terms were the same as Anthropic. Of course there is a possible reason to distrust them, but it seems public theatre.

I'm more concerned this is actually a coverup for a bribe, considering Brockman just dominated $25 million.

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.

Shame because Codex was a bit better for me in the past few weeks but not enough to justify spending my money on them.

...seems to me you should try to spend down those credits first, even if it's on something completely useless. Otherwise you're giving them free money (they never had to spend the compute).

Poll: are you boycotting because OpenAI is working with a military, or specifically because it is working with the US military?

As the page seems to be broken at the moment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260210082000/https://help.open...

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.

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

Yeah sure right after everyone deletes their X account and stops posting links here

Altman's immorality is theoretical

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

If you hammer their free tier with lots of nonsense queries that also probably doesn't help them. Definitely don't pay them

With that said, for the free tier I tend to use grok - another provider I will never pay

Anthropic does get money from me for now

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.

Good think I never had one.

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.

Done and done. Hope everyone can find the time and do the same.

I knew that Altman was a short term thinker, but this decision is surprising even for him. I will delete my accounts and never come back

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?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085

Just deleted my account. Sama’s bad faith communication on X really sealed the deal for me.

Moving my company over to Claude on Monday.

In the app, account deletion currently errors saying the action can't be started. Hard to believe this is coincidence.

Unfortunately, HN might represent a very tiny percentage of the decision makers who conduct business with OpenAI.

% of decision makers less relevant than % of recurring spend — decision makers over spend for 10s to 100s of Ks of “seats” are here.

From the HN Guidelines:

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

I haven’t used chatgpt for so long now. Only Claude and Gemini. Account permanently removed.

Done.

I canceled 2 months ago and they keep giving me free pro subscriptions

The whole story makes no sense to me. The DoW didn’t get what they wanted, and now Anthropic is tarred and feathered.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of...

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.

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.

Honestly it is a good time to vote with your wallet - the difference between the models for day to day tasks is very miniscule.

I don’t trust OpenAI, as they don’t trust me.

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

this post (4hrs ago, 1.5k points) is ranked 22, while quite a few older posts with less points are above it? hmmm

I will delete all my accounts

nothing is permanent... and i wonder if they actually delete your account (of course not)

Just deleted my account.

Could this be the pin?

has this thread been removed from the top of hacker news?

Done and deleted.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I call upon OpenAI to follow DeepSeek's lead and open source more models and techniques.

He's a Thiel disciple. Thiel orchestrated Trumps digital campaign. The End.

Deleted.

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

all this political activity should get flagged according to HN terms

Deleted mine months ago. Altman is one of the slimiest tech ceos out there, which is saying something.

"Your Delete my GPTs request has been completed"

done.

Boycott them all. Shit anti-human tech & philosophy.

Done

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.

"The company I hold just secured a government contract. Better sell it." - Imaginary Shareholder

As a matter of fact, the stock would be popping on the news that the DoD will be replacing Anthropic + Palantir with OpenAI + Palantir.

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.)

We already live in an oligarchy. The difference between us and Russia is that their government controls the oligarchy. Here the oligarchy controls the government.

Also please stop throwing around the fascist word for everything, good lord it’s tiring and cringe.

Why are your panties in a twist?

Do you rather be killed by Chinese AI instead?

You can use Anthropic btw.

I will :) Way better model also

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.

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.

I assume you missed this announcement from OpenAI:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650

Oh. That is indeed new. I take its part of the Anthropic saga follow up. In a sense, nothing still changed, because iirc, openAI was already doing stuff for DOW, but I can see now the reason for the reaction.

What about claude? Don't think they wont be used militarily that is naive...

You're out of the loop and making baseless assumptions.

This thread is currently trending because 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.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

https://x.com/secwar/status/2027507717469049070

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…

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.

We are all much less safe, and the AI industry much much weaker as a result.

Claude was very easy to unsubscribe from. I barely use it anymore anyways, primarily use Gemini

This feels like performative virtue signalling which is really not in the spirit of hacker news.

all what i hear is mimimimi...

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.

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.

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.

My understanding is that the DOD signed the terms of service, and are now trying to renegotiate them. Anthropic has declined to change the terms. This makes the government angry.

I just find it strange that you have the same people always complaining about how big tech is too powerful. If you have a problem with what you military is upto, you should take that up with your elected representatives. Boycotting an AI company is a laughable response and will have no effect on outcomes here.

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

What a weird thing to say.

"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."

"where required".... hmm, that seems OK. We don't want to violate the law!

"or permitted".... er...

[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.]

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