Amp removes proactive ID verification after same-day backlash

• Amp briefly added optional passport or government ID verification so users could pre-clear themselves for future frontier-model access, with sqs's launch post saying model labs or governments might require it on short notice.
• By the end of the day, sqs's rollback post said Amp had killed the feature after backlash, and sqs's deletion note said any completed verification records were deleted from Stripe.
• Throughout the thread, sqs's reply on optionality and sqs's follow-up on prior pushback framed the feature as advance prep for rules Amp says it does not control.
• The strongest concrete clue about those rules came from sqs's reply naming Fable and Mythos, which said identity checks were already necessary for Anthropic's Fable and Mythos models, while Anthropic's own statement on suspending Fable 5 and Mythos 5 described a sudden US export-control order.

You can read Amp's own security reference, which already emphasizes keeping users on the latest frontier models, and Anthropic's government-directive statement, which says the company had to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all customers to comply. The oddest detail in the thread is that sqs on Stripe Identity called the integration smooth, then sqs's rollback post killed the whole thing the same day. Amp's identity settings URL now resolves to a sign-in page rather than a live verification explainer.

Amp announced the feature as a proactive, optional step. The pitch in sqs's launch post was simple: verify now, avoid getting locked out later if a frontier model suddenly ships with identity requirements.

That plan lasted about 16 hours. In sqs's rollback post, sqs said Amp was killing the feature because he did not want to normalize what he called "an iron curtain on the frontier." sqs's deletion note added that users who had already verified were wiped from Stripe as well.

Amp's core defense was that the restriction was not self-imposed. In sqs's reply on optionality, sqs said verification would only be used if access rules demanded it, and in sqs's terse reply he said Amp had already been asked to implement this once before.

The thread got more specific in pieces:

• sqs's follow-up on prior pushback said Amp had previously fought the requirement and still shipped the model without it.
• sqs on short notice said policy changes can land with very little warning.
• sqs on delegation said he hoped model labs would delegate the verification step to downstream products like Amp.
• sqs on lab-owned agents worried that agents not owned by model labs might get delayed access, or no access at all.

That last point is the real live wire here. The thread is not just about KYC friction. It is about whether third-party coding agents get the same frontier-model access path as first-party surfaces.

From the start, Amp said it was outsourcing the verification mechanics. sqs's launch post said Stripe would do the identity verification and Amp would see only the outcome, not the underlying documents.

That lines up with Stripe's own Identity docs, which describe a hosted document-verification flow, and with Amp's security reference, which says Stripe handles billing-side personal data for the product. After the rollback, sqs's deletion note said the already-verified records were deleted on Stripe too.

Amp's linked identity settings URL no longer exposes a visible verification flow in public reads. Exa's fetch saw only a sign-in page.

One useful clarification from the thread is that Amp did not describe this feature as a direct export-control enforcement tool. In sqs on export controls, sqs said current ID verification would not really work to enforce export controls and called the new rules an emergency measure that would likely be replaced by something more workable.

He still said identity checks would probably be part of whatever comes next. That matters because it separates two claims that often get mashed together:

• export controls can force abrupt model shutdowns,
• identity verification can become the practical access gate that survives after the emergency phase.

Anthropic's official statement backs the first half. It says the US government ordered Anthropic to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, including Anthropic employees who are foreign nationals, and that Anthropic disabled both models globally to comply.

The most concrete new fact in the whole exchange came late in the day. In sqs's reply naming Fable and Mythos, sqs said identity verification was "literally necessary right now" for Fable and Mythos, even if that was only one data point and not the immediate trigger for Amp building the feature.

That gives the story a harder edge than a generic compliance argument. Amp was not preparing for an abstract future. It was reacting to at least one named frontier-model case, and to the possibility that access rules could favor model-lab-owned agents over independent ones, which sqs on lab-owned agents said might miss early access or be cut out entirely.