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As much as I dislike OpenAI’s ongoing shenanigans and disdain for their own customers, I tried to sign up for Claude last week. Turns out that Anthropic’s sign

by wswope 2y ago

As much as I dislike OpenAI’s ongoing shenanigans and disdain for their own customers, I tried to sign up for Claude last week. Turns out that Anthropic’s signup flow has been silently broken for months for Firefox users: https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1bq06yz/phone_verification_issues_anyone_else/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1bq06yz/phone_ver.... You get the SMS verification code, and you can enter it, but you get a barely visible “Invalid verification code” error message followed near-instantly by a refresh of the page. I reached out to support, but like many others, heard nothing back. This barely-disguised contempt for what should likely be their most valuable power-user base suggests to me that a lot of the recent departures from OpenAI are being driven by push instead of pull, and I’m not convinced that Anthropic will remain a competent competitor in the LLM arms race long-term.

HelloMcFly 2y ago
For what it's worth I signed up for Claude on Firefox without issues several days ago. I'm not saying the issue isn't real, but it isn't universal on the browser.
- wswope 2y ago
  Yeah - I run the ESR version of Firefox, which is probably the root of it, but wide prevalence of people hitting the same issue for so long + the total radio silence from support is what really threw me. At least OpenAI pretends to care by responding with AI-generated pseudohelp…
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    > total radio silence from support the new customer reality, courtesy Google etc..
hannofcart 2y ago
I'd like to add to this. I signed up and paid for credits to access their API last weekend. All requests still get rejected saying I don't have sufficient credit. This is despite their dashboard saying that I do indeed have the requisite credits. No response despite reaching out to support. Don't think I have been treated this indifferently by any other service in recent times.
richard___ 2y ago
Lol - talk about making a mountain out of an anthill
- wswope 2y ago
  You’re not wrong, but I’m more leaning on the anecdote to make a broader case that the big walled-garden players (Google/OAI/Anthropic) all kinda suck in similar ways. I.e. - I think Anthropic is seeing a boon right now not because they’re doing things right, but because the competition is doing them worse.
ygjb 2y ago
> This barely-disguised contempt for what should likely be their most valuable power-user base suggests Yikes. I am a long time Mozilla supporter, active user of Firefox since before it was Firefox, and former Mozilla employee, but this comment is pretty crazy. Firefox is well below 3% market share, and is essentially a niche browser at this point - it sucks when I run into sites and services that aren't supported by Firefox, but I don't assume that it's contempt for me as a Firefox user. I simply assume that I, as a power user, have opted to use an alternate tool that has features that are compelling to me, and I certainly don't expect every business out there to prioritize my use of a niche tool. I learned a long time ago that while power users can be an effective avenue for building a market for niche products, they also end up being some of the most problematic users, because of the assumptions that power user needs should be placed above the regular users. It's fine to want to be catered to, but it's not really great to assume malice when you aren't - it shows contempt for the prioritization of the limited resources they have available.
- wswope 2y ago
  Firefox is going to be massively disproportionately more popular among LLM users, the issue has been happening to people for over half a year, the error message is terribly misleading, and from a CS POV, it should be relatively easy to flag and route customers around the known issue. I’m not salty just because they don’t support the browser; you’re totally right that that’d be an unreasonable take, but it’s not the one I’m trying to make.
  - mvdtnz 2y ago
    > Firefox is going to be massively disproportionately more popular among LLM users Source for this claim?

by wswope 2y ago

HelloMcFly 2y ago

For what it's worth I signed up for Claude on Firefox without issues several days ago. I'm not saying the issue isn't real, but it isn't universal on the browser.

wswope 2y ago
Yeah - I run the ESR version of Firefox, which is probably the root of it, but wide prevalence of people hitting the same issue for so long + the total radio silence from support is what really threw me. At least OpenAI pretends to care by responding with AI-generated pseudohelp…
- mistrial9 2y ago
  > total radio silence from support the new customer reality, courtesy Google etc..

hannofcart 2y ago

I'd like to add to this. I signed up and paid for credits to access their API last weekend. All requests still get rejected saying I don't have sufficient credit. This is despite their dashboard saying that I do indeed have the requisite credits. No response despite reaching out to support. Don't think I have been treated this indifferently by any other service in recent times.

richard___ 2y ago

Lol - talk about making a mountain out of an anthill

wswope 2y ago
You’re not wrong, but I’m more leaning on the anecdote to make a broader case that the big walled-garden players (Google/OAI/Anthropic) all kinda suck in similar ways. I.e. - I think Anthropic is seeing a boon right now not because they’re doing things right, but because the competition is doing them worse.

ygjb 2y ago

> This barely-disguised contempt for what should likely be their most valuable power-user base suggests Yikes. I am a long time Mozilla supporter, active user of Firefox since before it was Firefox, and former Mozilla employee, but this comment is pretty crazy. Firefox is well below 3% market share, and is essentially a niche browser at this point - it sucks when I run into sites and services that aren't supported by Firefox, but I don't assume that it's contempt for me as a Firefox user. I simply assume that I, as a power user, have opted to use an alternate tool that has features that are compelling to me, and I certainly don't expect every business out there to prioritize my use of a niche tool. I learned a long time ago that while power users can be an effective avenue for building a market for niche products, they also end up being some of the most problematic users, because of the assumptions that power user needs should be placed above the regular users. It's fine to want to be catered to, but it's not really great to assume malice when you aren't - it shows contempt for the prioritization of the limited resources they have available.

wswope 2y ago
Firefox is going to be massively disproportionately more popular among LLM users, the issue has been happening to people for over half a year, the error message is terribly misleading, and from a CS POV, it should be relatively easy to flag and route customers around the known issue. I’m not salty just because they don’t support the browser; you’re totally right that that’d be an unreasonable take, but it’s not the one I’m trying to make.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  > Firefox is going to be massively disproportionately more popular among LLM users Source for this claim?