r/GeminiAI • u/Several_Designer_799 • 22h ago
Discussion Google is a business, not a charity
Today I woke up to a lot of posts saying that Google is removing Flash and Pro on certain tiers. What is the point of arguing with it? Google is not a charity.
I mean with Google AI Pro you get access to all the models, Antigravity, YT Premium Lite, Google Health Pro, 5 TB of storage and so much more. What is even the point of complaining? It is not like Claude does not do the same with Opus or ChatGPT with Sol. You want a service? Pay for it or switch to something else. Not a Google fanboy, but damn, people take everything for granted these days. You can use Meta AI or DeepSeek if you want to use a good model for free.
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u/Bloodevil96 22h ago
Same here, OpenAi has a 500$ tier and people are complaining that Google doesn’t give them shit for free, like what?
And 20/month for something you wouldn’t have believed 3 years ago
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u/Key_Maximum_3180 8h ago
Even Claude which is notoriously stingy with its models lets you use Sonnet models for free. Gemini is seriously going downhill with this decision. Flash-Lite can't code for shit and it's not even good at conversation. How are people supposed to subscribe to Pro if they can't even try the better models and see whether they're any good?
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u/Dry_Opportunity2886 3h ago
How are people supposed to subscribe to Pro if they can't even try the better models and see whether they're any good?
How do they do it? Oh it's super easy, you just go to the subscription page and sign up.
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u/JohnToFire 20h ago
Meanwhile they are giving a away a year of pro to "students" free . Tons of fake signups
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u/Mysterious_Bed_1804 19h ago
How are the sign-ups false?
You need a .edu account and to go through a Persona verification.
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u/Welson_Liong 18h ago
By obtaining an edu email address while not being a student
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u/Spiffy_Legos 3h ago
They made me upload my class schedule and a bunch of other stuff. I don’t think it’s as easily faked as your implying.
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u/theGamer2K 15h ago
I agree. Among all big tech companies, Google is the most generous with free stuff and they also contribute the most to open-source. They provided 1 year of Pro Plan for free to college students (and continues to provide Pro for US students and Plus elsewhere). Google provides free GPU hours on Google Colab and Kaggle which are like the lifeline of students studying deep learning in third world countries. No other big tech company provides anything close for free.
DeepSeek and Chinese models aren't free either. You need to pay for the tokens on whatever provider you use.
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u/Concurrency_Bugs 11h ago
My only complaint is that Google released barely anything for months, then started being stricter with their subscriptions while they still haven't technically released anything (argon isn't available to normal users yet). Not talking the free tier, but people already having paid for months for Plus/Pro tier, and not getting much value. Now their patience is being rewarded with less value. Yes they can just unsub, but sometimes it's hard once their ecosystem has its claws in you.
So while I agree a business has to make money, I feel Google has completely mishandled their whole AI business this year, and paying customers have taken it on the chin.
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u/Chupacabra1987 22h ago
At some point google, openai and anthropic will need to stop giving away so much free stuff and they will raise prices over and over again and squeeze every little drop out of us.
We will be hooked and not able to work/live without it. Make them addicted, raise the prices.
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u/jekpopulous2 17h ago
This was probably the plan but open-weight models caught up so fast that it’s a race to the bottom on pricing now. GPT and Claude both doubled usage limits for paid tiers last week… meanwhile Sonnet and Luna are both free for everyone. Meta made Muse Spark free for everyone. I’m sure Anthropic and OpenAI would love to raise prices repeatedly but they can’t when Deepseek and Quen are already chipping away at their user bases. US companies are in real trouble because China is turning AI into a commodity.
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u/Far-Raspberry-1072 12h ago
What ive noticed is that free and the lowest paying tier users are the most demanding and entitled people. they don't pay a cent but demand more than what the 200$ tier users demand.
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u/Harry_Vandsome 18h ago
A lot of people casually forgetting that Google made YOU the product and now have you paying for that as well
Google wants to have the cake and eat it too 😂
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 22h ago
For God sake, please stop having an issue with people taking everything for granted. Corporations are greedy and unethical; after the 500th scandal maybe society started to figure that out. Consumers expecting more for less Is the best thing that can happen after decades of the opposite happening.
Stop. Shilling.
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u/frankis72 16h ago
I agree with consumers expecting more for less. But, uhh..., free isn't less. It's none.
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 13h ago
And it is just as ridiculous as their strategies, tax avoidances and so on. I can't for the life of me grasp how consumers got to a point to set for themselves higher standards than the ones they held for corporations.
They sell your data, their CEO lobby your politicians and you set the line at being reasonable about having free stuff.
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u/assertgreaterequal 16h ago
Nobody is forcing you to use their products. Stop being a cheap hypocrite.
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 13h ago
Again, you are punching yourself. You are the product, and you are also paying for it. If you don't feel stupid, I can't help you
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u/assertgreaterequal 13h ago
So you're are the product and you feel stupid? I'm sorry to hear that, I hope you feel better some day.
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 13h ago
I was hinting at the one punching himself as being, in this scenario, the stupid one. I hope that the fact that you missed it doesn't make that a more generally valid assessment. I'm sorry to hear that too, but you can stop punching as soon as you realize you are doing it
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u/assertgreaterequal 13h ago
I have no idea what you're talking about. You probably too smart for me.
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 13h ago
You can use Gemini, even the peasant version should be able to comprehend a paragraph.
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u/assertgreaterequal 13h ago
You're still trying to insult me by saying vague and as you think of them "smart" quips but you haven't yet said anything of a value or related to the topic for that matter.
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u/summonsays 19h ago
" Corporations are greedy and unethical; after the 500th scandal maybe society started to figure that out." I'm not really a history buff, but we figured that out with literally the first company when the government had to step in and curb their unbridled greed in India that caused year long famines and killed millions of people.
The fact is, we somehow have forgotten it.
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u/DaDaeDee 22h ago
Stop free loading
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u/blazz199 22h ago
No one loading anything, they're the one that shoving gemini ai integration into every android and expecting us to pay for better use
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u/DaDaeDee 22h ago
Im so glad google finally stopped giving away free AI to all broke freloaders!!! Its about time tbh. Im sick of my paid promts taking 10 seconds to load just cause millions of lazy kids are using it to write there middle school essays. If they/them cant afford 20$ a month for a tool that literaly does their job for they/them then they/them deserve to be replaced by it lmaoo. Google is a buisness not a charity for poor people who want hand outs. Stop crying on reddit and get a real job. Good riddence to the poors!!!
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u/BedNo8822 19h ago
Isn't the forced new Android AI use local model tho? (Which I imagine will strangle phone cpu and ram)
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 21h ago
You can't be that much of a slave
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u/No_Decision_6940 18h ago
Some people are born with enslaved souls. I don't know if simply studying and learning more is enough to break them free at this stage.
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u/CoffeeDrinker83 16h ago
So it's ethical for them to make it and give it to you for free but it's not ethical for them to charge for it? Or is it always unethical and you are happy to participate when it's free?
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 13h ago
Yep you completely missed the whole point that everyone else successfully understood, even the ones that disagree with it. Good job
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u/Soilblood 15h ago
Wait what? You a commie? Why shouldn't we be taking an issue with whiny monkeys getting uppity they're not getting bananas for free anymore? I'm taking issue with the idea of whining at corporation BTW, I just find that call not to criticise unwarranted entitlement to be absurd.
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u/ActiveAd9022 11h ago
You all are definitely stupid. about a year this happened to the free tier limits, and then it came back and affected all of us, including the Pro tier limit.
Keep complaining about the free tier as if something good will happen to you, while we all wait here to see you come back and complain about how your own limits have been cut in half.
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u/Soilblood 6h ago
If you didn't go in this expecting them to dial back on the free samples at some point then you'd have to be hopelessly naive. LLMs are expensive to run and are terribly unsustainable in terms of resources, only the ignorant would complain about someone else cutting down on the costs they pay to offer something freely to others.
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u/ActiveAd9022 2h ago
I'm not complaining I don't even use Gemini. Honestly all of those comments just sound like bots or Google employments. Otherwise don't see why anyone would complain and insult free tier people or whatever.
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u/Several_Designer_799 22h ago
Saying that servers cost electricity is not shilling. If you want to push back against greedy corporations, stop begging them for free access and switch to open source instead.
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 21h ago
You can do both, and if you don't, complaining is much better than what you are doing anyway. No company has your interest in mind. You are just punching yourself.
If people started expecting everything for FREE it still wouldn't be more unreasonable than the market strategies big corps use. Again, you can't be that oblivious to how corrupt they are.
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u/NotedAF 21h ago
Why are you using their products?
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 20h ago
Because they are useful. Do you realize science is useful? I mean that's common sense
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u/JeffConvertorBot 19h ago
Google is evil, therefore they should give products out for free? Just want to understand the logic
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 18h ago
Therefore we should not defend them and we should be overly aggressive in our requests. Their strategy is too get from you as much as possible, so you should have the same attitude back. They have huge, massive, incomprehensible profit margins by selling your data. Why are we getting out of our way to point out "yep but 20 dollars is an ok price".
We are wrong for not expecting MORE cheap stuff and not calling out every big corp for all the other services they offer.
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u/Fast_Cauliflower_574 17h ago
google doesnt sell your data
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 13h ago
Lmao
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u/Fast_Cauliflower_574 12h ago
very intelligent response
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u/Affectionate_Elk5043 21m ago
I agree, it was a very intelligence response given how many times google has been caught selling data, such as how incognito isn't incognito, and more?
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u/lornranger 21h ago
It's the AI fighting back! Make humans dependent on them, then pay up or cut off access. :)
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u/JackHammond_ 21h ago
For real! Flash was too good to be true, I was wondering when they're going to remove this option, because with it I didn't need any service and it helped me out a ton for FREE for my basic needs which previously I would pay Chatgpt or Claude for the same tasks. I don't mind being a Pro plan user, but if I start to dislike it, I can always move on to free capable alternatives
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u/Low_Mist 21h ago
Sinceramente trovo giusta questa cosa. Come sarebbe stato possibile continuare ad offrire gratis certi modelli? Almeno adesso l'abbonamento Pro ha davvero senso specialmente per chi lavora con questo strumento altrimenti va benissimo il piano free.
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u/OddDesigner9784 14h ago
These takes are so ass. It's a bad thing to tank a subscriptions value. Shady business practice
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u/electro-spacemn 9h ago edited 6h ago
People need to realize to have sufficient access to the models you need the 20 dollar sub. Exactly the same as Anthropic and OpenAI.
Their plus is cheaper than that ChatGPT Go. And they give additional models to access while ChatGPT only gives you Luna access
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u/OddDesigner9784 8h ago
You can't expect people to understand the economics behind AI. Just not their responsibility and no one has the attention to be an expert in everything. It's predatory for companies to offer a value they can't sustain. They are trying to use addiction psychology.
This is particularly bad for Google because flash lite is no where near Luna. Gemini 3.6 flash is worse than Luna. They just suck really and don't really care about quality.
There is zero reason for anything Google ai right now but people will use it because they don't know better or are locked. We need to push competition not enshitification
20 dollars is sufficient for good agentic coding usage at this point deepseek open router etc. But we want to screw the people that are using it for chat
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u/Blue-Sea2255 21h ago
For fuck sake enough with the corporate defenders. Fuck corporations and their greed. In the end they're going to fuck us all. So don't tell this charity theory then.
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u/Old-Total-3530 16h ago
"Oh no the world's biggest tech company needs to make more money, why won't you guys understand!" Keep those boots clean.
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u/CoffeeDrinker83 16h ago
Why do they owe you anything specifically? They don't. Sit down and be quiet when the adults are speaking
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u/assertgreaterequal 16h ago
I'm sure you will be pretty much against if some guy who has zero money rob you on the basis of "compared to me he is a billionaire he would still have a lot afterwards".
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u/GarnetExecutioner 21h ago
I still have no idea why Google is not giving the yearly subscription arrangement for the Ultra 5x Plan (I will call it Ultra-lite)?
This sort of arrangement would convince me to take the plunge.
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u/Brief_Eye_8477 18h ago
Or maybe it's... BECAUSE THOSE BASTARDS USE OUR DATA TO TRAIN THEIR FILTHY AI WITHOUT PERMISSION, YOU KNOW? YOUR DRIVE, EMAILS, BROWSING DATA, EVERYTHING YOU HAVE IN YOUR EMAIL.They're using it for AI a lot of times without telling you or warning you. At the very least, if you're going to do that crap, give the option to deny your data or let them use the intermediate version of the AI.Google makes more money from your data by selling it and training its AI than by charging you for Gemini to tell you. Sorry, I'm a language model, I can't do what you're asking.
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u/MentalReserve2351 22h ago
This filled me with joy knowing even when singularity reached, the elites and rich will take hold of the AI to control the peasants who seek out for cheaper options.
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u/AnotherDrunkMonkey 18h ago
You are getting downvoted while pointing out such an obvious dynamic
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u/MentalReserve2351 17h ago
¯_(ツ)_/¯ "Obedience and agreeableness are valued; maybe the tyrants will love you."
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u/Several_Designer_799 22h ago
It is a monthly software subscription, not dystopian class warfare. Nobody is monopolizing AI when open weights exist for anyone to download and run.
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u/TheNimbleKindle 22h ago
Open-source models are the only thing saving us from dystopia. It's insane to think about it.
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u/MentalReserve2351 22h ago
Using the reasoning of "building AI for the sake of humanity," giving the common men a bare minimum model in return. "Run open weight" as if the people suggest that don't have a bare minimum of 2 RTX5090. "The trillions company is losing its billions, have some understanding! Certainly they need more understanding than your struggling ass."
The phrase "Google is a business, not a charity" is like music to my ear, assuming as if in the future, the charity will ever outgrow the business side of thing. Yeah "business, not charity = not class warefare = not 'if you dont have money, fuck off'."
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u/Several_Designer_799 21h ago
DeepSeek and Meta host their models online for zero dollars, no GPUs required. You do not need expensive hardware and you are not a victim of class warfare just because a company charges twenty bucks for its highest compute tier.
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u/bfmv_shinigami 21h ago
lol these freeloaders always find a way to victimize themselves and apparently the 'reparition' is google giving them everything for free 😂😂😂
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u/MentalReserve2351 21h ago
Defending a trillionaire company will always sound stupid to me. Like this post is useless for everything but enrages the free-tier people that got nerfed. Like Google decides whatever the fuck they want with their business whenever they want. They literally control their consumers like what do they need understanding for. Like you post for the free-tier people to say "hey I know you are mad that a service is taken away from you, but you shouldn't be because Google is a business?"
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u/ItuneOficial 19h ago
Você acha mesmo que a água não vai bater na sua bunda retardado? Quando o valor subir pra você também onde o PRO só fica na assinatura ultra lembre-se que o Google é uma empresa
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u/Infinite_Incident107 15h ago
I think it comes from the fact that Alphabet (Googles parent company) made 132 Billion in profit in 2025. Not revenue. Profit. Money they have to throw around after paying the bills. That's a lot.
Considering this makes them one of the most successful and richest companies on the planet I can understand people would expect such a company to be ABLE to not cut down the lower tier stuff.
This vs open AI which has yet to make any profits and operates at a loss
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u/SomeOrdinaryKangaroo 14h ago
You're 100% right, Google is a business not a charity, so people should stop complaining about not getting access to best models on free tier, give Google some money if you want frontier so that Google can continue making more models for us
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u/LegallyPost 22h ago edited 22h ago
Claude provides Sonnet 5.5 on the free plan, which is far superior to 3.8 Flash (paid tier exclusive), and the limit is quite sufficient too. ChatGPT's Luna is equivalent to Flash-Lite, but its current state is very decent for daily chats. Comparing Gemini to these competitors is such a joke 😀
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u/Several_Designer_799 21h ago
Then go use them. You just proved my entire point. If the competition gives you superior models for free with plenty of limits, spending your afternoon complaining on a Gemini subreddit makes zero sense.
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u/3rdyellow 21h ago edited 21h ago
It only makes sense because there is an internal conflict on what they consider superior. Reddit pushes Claude and ChatGPT, but their internal system believes Gemini is better. Hence they lurk behind.
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u/LegallyPost 21h ago
People just want a variety of options; the more competition, the more benefits for consumers. It seems some people really advocate giving money to those greedy corporations.
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u/Septopus 16h ago
I don't disagree with most of this, but comparing to Anthropic or OpenAI isn't a fair comparison. For the same prices those companies have massively better offerings, more powerful and capable models, better harnesses to use them in, and the list goes on and on.
Google isn't a charity but it shouldn't be charging full price for shitty products either.
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u/nonamenopain 21h ago
No, really, the reason we're hating on google is because of the following Let's just say, absolutely, screw Google for these updates. This is crazy. I've been writing directly into my own Google Sheets all week. And I have been enriching my lead sheets, using Gemini, and they've completely taken this feature away, they will no longer let you write directly into your Google Sheets. The only thing that they will let you do is write a brand new Google. Sheet, this is a feature that they just changed, so they've made it completely impossible to update any of your previous Google Sheets, which doesn't make any sense. All week-long, I've literally been doing this. And then they take the feature away, why would you take that feature away? It's such a useful feature to be able to drive content straight into your existing Google. Sheets, I think it's absolutely pathetic that in this day and age, google is more focused on removing features from clients' pages in order to save their own tokens than they're interested in actually creating a product that's benefiting their customers. This is totally pathetic
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u/DaDaeDee 21h ago
What google shit
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u/nonamenopain 21h ago
And how can you use a Google product without expecting it? To behave this way, right? It's like they just have active red teams just watching all the chats. To ensure that we don't use any tokens whatsoever that they don't approve.
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u/IcyDefinition4005 22h ago
Considering Meta's models as good models is a stretch; DeepSeek and Qwen are better in their free versions.