ChatGPT reads your browser state. Copilot injects ads. I'm using a $2/month Claude API instead.

ChatGPT reads your browser state. Copilot injects ads. I'm using a $2/month Claude API instead. This week was rough for AI trust. First: ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state — someone decrypted the fingerprinting code that runs before every ChatGPT session. It's reading your browser's internal React state tree. Before you type a single character. Then: Copilot edited an ad into a pull request. A Microsoft-owned coding tool injected promotional content into code review. Both stories hit the top of Hacker News simultaneously. Both have hundreds of comments from developers who are done. I left months ago. Here's what I use instead. The problem with Big Tech AI When the product is free or cheap, you're not the customer — you're the data source. ChatGPT at $20/month is still OpenAI's product, trained on your conversations, fingerprinting your browser, optimizing for engagement over accuracy. Copilot is Microsoft. Microsoft's revenue model is not "help developer