> Can anyone help me understand why this particular issue is any different than...

Questions like this are basically whataboutism, in effect even if not intent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

The question essentially assumes the premise that nobody complained about Anthropic's previous actions. In case you can't tell, I strongly reject this premise. People have been criticizing "safety" rhetoric from Anthropic and other LLM providers practically since the start. Remember Goody-2, the parody of excessively safety-tuned LLMs that refuses to do anything ever? That was released in February 2024, two years ago! (And it's still running, amazing. https://www.goody2.ai/chat )