alt Hacker NewsOpenAI – How to delete your account
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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 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.’
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.
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.
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.
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?
For people who still have e instincts to estimate other people by their face and gestures, Mr Altman appears glaringly a conman.
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.
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
Ok I'll bite: Why is this interesting? Is it because it's really difficult to delete? Or what?
As the page seems to be broken at the moment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260210082000/https://help.open...
Done.
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
Unfortunately, HN might represent a very tiny percentage of the decision makers who conduct business with OpenAI.
Honestly it is a good time to vote with your wallet - the difference between the models for day to day tasks is very miniscule.
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
Good think I never had one.
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.
FYI for basic stuff you can always use duck.ai which also aggregates other models.
In the app, account deletion currently errors saying the action can't be started. Hard to believe this is coincidence.
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.
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
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.
Done.
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
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.
Nope.
Boycott them all. Shit anti-human tech & philosophy.
Why are your panties in a twist?
Do you rather be killed by Chinese AI instead?
wish oai was publicly traded so i could buy the dip on all this nonsense. the one for musk was super juicy.
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It’s 2026, guys. Stop it with this performative bs. It’s cringe.
What about claude? Don't think they wont be used militarily that is naive...
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?
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.