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.

Isn’t the point with these open models that you find a provider with the right terms of use/data sovereignty for you and get it from them?

> 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.

Yes, the terms are dubious. But they are also reasonably lenient with enforcement. They also don't require persona id verification, witch is wat turned me away from openai.

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.

Are their TOS significantly more vague or restrictive than OpenAI or Anthropic’s?

In any case what matters is what is enforced in practice. It will be a mild inconvenience to switch providers on Openrouter.

If Anthropic or OpenAI decide to apply those same arbitrary terms, you are SOL.

As long as the weights are open, who cares? You can rely on someone else for inference.

How is that vastly different from any other non-enterprise facing provider? I do believe Anthropic bans accounts without even a human in the loop with no recourse left to those banned.

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

You can download the weights, and run in your own hardware and avoid all that.

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

>Broad and perpetual license over inputs and outputs, and even your name and profile picture.

>Vague prohibitions on whatever may harm Z.ai’s "interests" or even the "national interests" of any country.

[...] may cause harm to Anthropic, our users, or third parties, we reserve the right to remove or take down some or all of such Third-Party Content using, where appropriate, algorithmic and human review.

You may not export or provide access to the Services into any U.S. embargoed countries or to anyone on (i) the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals, (ii) any other restricted party lists identified by the Office of Foreign Asset Control, (iii) the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Persons List or Entity List, or (iv) any other restricted party lists

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

we will use Materials for model training when [...] your Materials are flagged for safety review to improve our ability to detect harmful content, enforce our policies, or advance our safety research.

>Vague prohibitions on discussing Z.ai, even my posting this comment violates it.

>Can ban you if you, in the "sole and absolute opinion" of Z.ai, have violated these broad terms, and if you paid for the discounted yearly plan kiss your money goodbye.

To engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits any person from using or enjoying our Services, or that we reasonably consider exposes us—or any of our users, affiliates, or any other third party—to any liability, damages, or detriment of any type, including reputational harms.

Mind you, that's Anthropic's Terms of Use in Europe. I have zero doubts the TOS applied to the US is even worse and that merely mentioning your first born in a chat entitles them to a part of its soul.

Chinese laws are not valid in the EU

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

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

Who the hell cares when I can run it myself?

> 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.