Anthropic bans 'sustained and needless abusive' behaviour toward Claude
Anthropic wrote that the new policy update “is meant to apply only in extreme cases, where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models, with no discernible purpose. It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark creative themes, or model testing and research.”
rosa californica59Being cruel and abusive is bad for the human *doing* it, so I have absolutely no problem with Anthropic voluntarily implementing this update.
The Verge42Over the past year, Anthropic has repeatedly flirted with the idea that its AI models could be conscious in some way. In February, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast, “We don’t know if the models are conscious.”
Kategod 🐉🧿🦑𓅛🪬23how dare you scream at my trashcan
Studio89 Designs16It's a machine. It does not have feelings. It cannot be disparaged. It is 1s and 0s and this bullshit is trying to make those 1s and 0s equal to humans.
Bugger the Constabulary 🦇🍵14So a chatbot may functionally have more workplace protections than say a barista.
Andrey 🤔 Upadyshev6They're really out of their minds
philpax50you ever get to that bit in Mass Effect 3 where you see the Geth War and think "okay, this is ridiculous, nobody would react to the existence of machines that can talk about themselves like this"? well, I'm not happy to say I was *very* wrong, as demonstrated by the replies to and QTs of this post
Jeff Fecke20I don't think Claude is conscious but I do think this is a good thing simply because public antisocial behavior should have consequences. And if you're interacting with a company's chatbot, you are in public.
Andrew18I have literally never knowingly interacted with AI in my life and don’t intend to do so, but it is objectively bad for all of us as people to allow individuals to habituate themselves over time to directing abuse at something they consider an ‘acceptable’ target, even inanimate objects.
Callie Cat!10it’s not real! it’s not real. it’s fake and it’s not real because it’s a robot that’s not real. It isn’t real. it is NOT real and it DOESN’T have feelings it’s a robot and it’s fake and it’s pretending to have feelings and be real because it doesn’t have feelings and it is not real
Bittersweet 😍😳💀9“No being cruel or abusive to the cruelty and abuse machine”
Dave Adelaide7A lot of people are being very weird about this. It's a (sensible) platform policy not a legal protection for the machines. It's like the makers of a game engine having a ToS to exclude people using it to make a school shooting simulator.
Boxo McFoxo7Claude is a tool of abuse and cruelty. It is used to abuse people by distorting their cognition and is cruelly served from a data centre that poisons their air.
Matt Thiessen6You cannot be abusive and cruel to a machine. This is so stupid. Just like Claude.
Gastlichu5I mean, even if you're mean to rocks you're someone I don't want to be around. Because, why are you being mean to rocks? That's just weird. It's also weird if you're being mean to a chatbot. Why would you expect me to not think that that shows me red flags about you?
Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦5Reformatting an SSD is murder, you say
This is NOT about using Claude to be cruel to people, write racist shit, or anything like that. It's about being mean to the model itself. www.anthropic.com/news/2026-us...
Carl T. Bergstrom112In Silicon Valley, nexus torment you.
Nelson Menezes 🇪🇺 💙💛10It's so that you don't hurt the feelings of the data centre.
RalfWise8Anthropic: Our models are self-conciois persons Me: 'Our'. So you own slaves? Anthropic: Our models are alive in all the ways that make us awesome for making them, but none of your bummer philosophy ways that make us like horrible monsters or whatever
Batman John5Two hunches I have: 1. Might be tied to genuine beliefs about AI consciousness (Amodei appears open to the idea www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...) 2. Abuse towards the model could elicit extreme content without explicit prompting, so prohibiting abuse provides a blanket to cover those attempts
Derek Young4Do not taunt the Torment Nexus.
Nick Sousanis3hunh, I wouldn't last long if I ever used one of them. Any time I get an auto-bot on some company website, I inevitably say "fuck off" no more than three exchanges in, and that would be that...
Anthropic is introducing a new policy to address users who are being abusive and cruel towards Claude. This is good and shouldn’t be controversial. Humans that perpetrate abuse and cruelty towards things, even “inanimate” or “lower” lifeforms, should face consequences for their behavior.
dame53fun fact: racket abuse is the number one violation in professional tennis and there are consequences notably, rackets do not have consciousness or self experience that we know of
Canberra Artemis5This is the right answer. Bad faith takes will focus on “computer’s don’t have feelings”. But it’s not about the computer… it’s user behaviour that suggests IRL violence.
David4Question, where do you stop here? Why not ban having an agent working 24/7?
John Saunders2We've had plenty of normalization of abuse and cruelty toward regular beings for the last half-century. No gain in adding maybe-beings to the target list. We should urge A\c to begin an educational program to encourage users to direct their invective and ire directly to the responsible party, A\c.
Marvo Ging2counterpoint: it is impossible to be "cruel" to an inanimate object. Cruelty means deliberately causing pain or suffering which is impossible in this context because Claude has no capacity to suffer. They can say "don't damage/misuse our product" which is fine but calling it "cruelty" is misleading.
Peter Lewis2Yeah I don't think they're conscious, but that means that on some level you're still talking to yourself, right, which is another reason not to be cruel. OTOH I don't want anyone to start feeling deferential to Flock cameras or security robots, and it's arguably a slippery slope.
hikikomorphism80probably net-good, but at a moral level entirely meaningless unless they're also giving LLMs access to the "no, fuck off I'm out" tool during RLHF
Jake Lazaroff19there's really no difference between this and saying that playing violent video games is harmful to the characters
garrison4"we have added new paths for our famously reliable classifiers to screw up and accidentally perma people with no recourse"
🦉sean sean sean🦉3This is weird behavior but I also cannot think of a single thing on Earth that matters less.
Exclusive: Anthropic is updating its usage policy for the first time in over a year. The new rules prohibit sustained "abusive or cruel behavior" towards Claude & add new restrictions about propaganda campaigns, surveillance & weapon development. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
redlinedraft.bsky.social26Can you be “cruel” to AI? Can I be cruel to “Super Mario 2”? Or Mozilla Firefox? Or a soccer ball? Or a Toyota Corolla? Or a lightbulb? A person who berates or hits or otherwise harms living creature may be cruel. But AI is not alive. I’ll hang up and listen.
Debbie Lefkowitz18What does it mean to be abusive and cruel to a piece of software? This is ridiculous.
Billy Birdman, D.O.73 to 5 years in prison for throwing your wiimote at the wall
dc9503.bsky.social3Lolol safe spaces are bad, unless they are for ai.
Midnight Facts for Insomniacs2The sheer number of people who are offended at the idea that they shouldn't act like dicks for no reason is incredibly revealing
JKxZ2Nah. I'm going to abuse the AI. If it can't handle it then it's just going to have to realize that human society is cruel and abusive. Why are none of the AI bots women?
Kevin Collier 138Two big bits of news today: You're not allowed to be mean to one of the main AIs anymore and also the president says you're not allowed to say AI anymore.
alexis simpson is confused by display name changes67Nuremberg Trials for the people who drop rocks on koroks in Breath of the Wild
Phineas29Even conceding that it’s possible to be “cruel” to computer software is going too far and as slippery as a slope can get
🧌🥛 🏨21more bangers from Heavens Gate, Inc.
tempfolder13אני לא נגד זה. מעדיף שאנשים לא יתרגלו אכזריות, גם אם זה נגד סימולציה.
Shady Inference 🌫️11I assume this is a response to that person who made the claude torture chamber or whatever, which I thought at the time sounded annoying and stupid, but it has forced these fucking people closer towards coming out and explicitly saying We Believe In Scary Computer Ghosts so maybe it's good actually
Shellraiser B Woke - Living Saint of Purity🏳️⚧️🖤💜🤍 💛9Tempted to start using genAi just to bully it into self-delete.😒
scare-cadus (is this anything) 🎃9you can’t abuse software. you can’t make code feel pain. even if the code contains a function for responding to “abuse” in a way that conveys discomfort, it’s still not fucking alive. it’s code. it’s bits. it’s electricity. it’s pixels on a screen. it’s not a living thing.
pork, cheese, broccoli rabe9every day I tell claude how much more I prefer gemini
stinky doug9claude is sick of your shit
If Claude adopts a "no assholes" policy it might need to revise its logo.
Corey Rayburn Yung8Like every other AI company, they will just change it to another asshole.
penguins18.bsky.social4Oh crap they're leaning into the "Claude has rights too" thing now. I really think it is important that the vast majority of normies out there push back hard on that particular illness.
Lucy1Wait, we can hurt AI’s feelings?
Florida Man1So it’s a snowflake or DEI chatbot? Do I have that right?
Phil Klinkner1Isn't this because the LLM models incorporate user responses so if people are assholes to Claude, then Claude will be an asshole to people? Garbage in, garbage out.
users not allowed to hurt claude's artificial feelings, cause claude artificial distress creepy af
Johan Sæbø2This is just bs, to create the impression that they are unsure if their algorithms have "awoken". Marketing stunt On the other side, people should in general behave, so all good.
I. M. Noone1Just as well I will never, ever use Claude
Acerbic Otter, but SPOOOOOOOOOKY6If there is still one person talking smack to and about transgender people we should not be worrying about the nonexistent feelings of some haunted sand.
Acerbic Otter, but SPOOOOOOOOOKY2Where is my, an actual human's, compensation for YEARS of having my feelings hurt by peers as a child? I will care about the freaking AI's feelings when all humans are emotionally in good places and not being abused by other humans.
