If I were anthropic I’d force that too. They offer the harness and if they control the entire pipeline then they can optimize the entire experience. It doesn’t have to be nefarious.
Its not 'nefarious' in that its in their best business interests.
But it'd be difficult to take anyone serious who thinks Anthropic's motivation was to improve the UX, and the other effect were by accident. At the time they specifically started blocking based on openclaw prompt text. Its a walled-garden tactic.
A walled garden is nefarious to people who do not want to be inside one.
It's still questionable but I don't think it's in the same ballpark as what you describe.
The nefarious part is because it's non optional. They could give you an option and compete by being better, instead you're given the finger as the option is taken from you. Competition is hard and banning people to create more FUD serves business need better.
You've obviously been gaslit so badly you're desperate to find a way to defend a shitty move and pretend it's the only way to increase usability. But you don't have to deny really! You're allowed to admit control is easier for a company than competition, and that they didn't have to, but did because it increases their control of the ecosystem.
If you want to defend someone, good? But at least save it for someone who actually deserves it. They don't; and you insult you and your readers intelligence by trying.
The only issue is that Anthropic optimizes the entire experience for their bottom line. User experience and price only suffer becaue of that.
So what? When you care about optimising the entire experience, you offer sane defaults.
When you prevent people from changing the defaults, it's about control, not experience.