Isn't this practically every TOS though?

Nearly every TOS I've ever read has a "We can ban you for any reason, or no reason, are under no obligation to disclose any reason." line somewhere in it.

HN's for example

> We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or modify portions of these Terms of Use at any time.

> You acknowledge that Y Combinator may establish general practices and limits concerning use of the Site,

> You further acknowledge that Y Combinator reserves the right to change these general practices and limits at any time, in its sole discretion, with or without notice.

> Y Combinator reserves the right to investigate and take appropriate legal action against anyone who, in Y Combinator’s sole discretion, violates this provision, including without limitation, removing the offending content from the Site, suspending or terminating the account of such violators and reporting you to the law enforcement authorities.

> Can ban you if you, in the "sole and absolute opinion" of Z.ai, have violated these broad terms.

OpenAI revoked my Cyber verification, along with many others, asked to reverify (i.e. give my biometric information to Persona), had me do it 8 times, just to find out several days later that they silently implemented a nationality whitelist, and my nationality didn't make it (and no, it's not a sanctioned country).

Their support says they can't look into anything or do anything, and their public spokespersons on X deny everything.

I get tons of cyber refusals now (lots of reverse engineering), so it's only matter of time when my account is going to get banned.

At least Z.AI is being honest here. And no provider other than OAI/ANT had me submit my biometric information just to use Ghidra.

I get all that.

Then alternatives are:

- Grok - where I absolutely have 0 trust in X.ai's interst in "pushing humanity forward".

- OpenAI and Anthropic - which seem to try to be building the biggest moat they can by pushing to ban open models. And at the same time want to be an Arbiter of what level of intelligence I can use.

- Google and Meta - I don't need to talk about the practices of these companies.

Yes, the terms of service aren't great. But the alternatives aren't great either. I don't believe that a future which OpenAI and Anthropic are pushing for has my best interest in mind.

The model is MIT-licensed, so run it on any of the non-Chinese inference providers that will host it in a few days.

It's China. It's a given that they use your data for training. At least they're nice enough to be honest about it.

The model weights are MIT licensed.

I blocked Z.ai as soon as they were loading 10 different external providers including Alibaba who was just proven to execute silent sound fingerprinting mechanisms.

Give it a couple days, and there will be plenty of other inference companies hosting it. Don't like z.ai's TOS? Use the model on a provider with TOS that you agree with.

None of that applies if you run it at home. Also 3rd party providers will start serving this pretty soon under different terms.

TOS is and will ever be just a "pretty please".

Chinese laws are not valid in the EU

> Vague prohibitions on "disturbing" or "inappropriate" content, whatever that is.

I have prompted out a lot of disturbing and inappropriate content with GLM-5.2, that would have left other American models blanched in the face or clutch their pearls. I think this is mostly a reference to Anti-CCP stuff.

In fact, I don't think I've ever even had a prompt refused.

Who the hell cares when I can run it myself?

They all do that, some are just more honest to tell you upfront than others.

you can abliterate any open model like this. This is pretty standard stuff in a TOS. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find the same in OAI or Anthropic's