I'm a 21M and my older brother is 31M.

For some backstory: he used to be the intimidator of the household. He was obsessed with the gym, went to parties, and dreamed of becoming a bodybuilder. But when he wasn't doing that, he'd rough-house me, yell at me, and blame me for things I didn't do, sometimes just because he thought it was funny. On top of that, our home was already chaotic: my mother was a workaholic and abusive, my father was an alcoholic and absent, and we shared a two-bedroom apartment with my aunt and cousins. I thought this was all normal until a school counselor in middle school told me it wasn't. It was abuse. For the first time I felt seen, and it completely shattered my understanding of what was and wasn't safe.

To gloss over a lot: my mother, father, and brother eventually changed, they became less abusive. The problem? It happened too fast. Because I had grown so accustomed to the abuse, I was always waiting for the peace to collapse back into the toxic environment I'd grown up in. I was stuck in survival mode. I was used to conditional love, yelling, and being woken up in the middle of the night, not sudden unconditional love and safety. They all healed through religion, but I still carried my scars and barely had time to process mine.

This led to suicide attempts on my part. After everything I'd been through, I was exhausted and couldn't see a future for myself. My family — especially my brother — didn't see it that way. They accused me of "purposely carrying the past" and wallowing in self-pity instead of moving on. My brother once shouted at me in his gym that my attempts were selfish and "not of God."

Fast forward to today: I got my own phone number, off his plan. He wasn't fully angry about it, more of a silent annoyance. The apartment we live in is under his name because the job market is rough (I'm an unemployed college student) and my father has no Tax ID. But ever since my brother moved out, I've been able to slowly heal. I realized I don't want to text him, and I definitely don't want to go to his house.

He still has the keys and shows up unannounced, which makes me flinch every time. I've recognized I have PTSD tied to him. My heart races the moment I sense his presence. I haven't reached out in three months.

This morning he showed up unannounced with his wife to check mail (he never bothered to update his mailing address). As I was heading to class, I heard him say from behind me, "Maybe text me every once in a while, yeah?" I white-lied back with "I'll try," but my heart dropped. I know his pattern, he'll pull my mother into it, and they'll sit me down for a "talk" that's really just judgment dressed up in religious justification.

So, Reddit — AITAH for not reaching out to my brother or trying to rebuild our relationship when I personally am not ready to?

I am writing this as a paying customer. When I signed up for this service, I paid for the product they initially showed me, which had functional, diverse chat styles and consistent quality. I did not sign up for the completely different, broken service they have suddenly forced upon us.

Here is exactly why the recent changes are a disaster for both old subscribers and new users.

The broken default tier and malicious YAP compliance

They removed all the viable chat styles and left us with only two. One is CAI-only, and the other is completely broken to the core, giving replies that completely lack dialogue most of the time. This is what they are offering to new viewers who are testing the platform.

When the community rightfully backlashed, their response felt like pure spite. They introduced the new YAP style as a literal dig at user complaints. It is like management said, "Oh, you want characters to talk more? Fine, have this." Now, that style just rambles endlessly with zero coherence. They are intentionally breaking the balance so inner thoughts, scene information, and dialogue do not naturally flow. They are intentionally making it bad.

A failed business strategy that takes users for granted

They are clearly doing this to lower operating costs. While we understand compute costs money, making the service terrible for beginners is a massive blunder.

They think breaking the free experience will magically turn free users into paying ones. It will not work. Free users will just leave. They might see a tiny, temporary spike in premium sign-ups from desperate power users, but it will not last. If the initial experience is garbage, no one is going to open their wallet. You cannot grow a customer base by making your product worse and taking existing users for granted. That is how you lose people.

Stop trying to turn the app into TikTok

No one asked for frivolous, gimmicky features like creating videos. Literally no one is doing that. We are here for text-based AI character interactions. Stop trying to turn this app into TikTok. You are not that, and your user base does not want you to be that.

Users want consistency, not a completely reinvented, broken app every single month. People are keeping their distance because CAI has proven they cannot be trusted to maintain a stable, reliable service.

I am reposting it here in the chance that the mods of r/Character.AI subreddit take it down.

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So, by the looks of it from an outsider perspective looking inward. The company no longer cares about you nor your opinion.

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I believe that around the lawsuits of families that had their children die from using the app is where things started to downhill. Which if I'm going to be honest, both are at fault. The parents who regardless of them being busy or occupied with work and other life events should regulate their children better rather then expect companies bottle-neck their progress for your child's needs.

I understand their is a lot going on in the world. I understand you may be so busy that you end up tunnel focused on your life that you end up neglecting the life of your child. But, having children is a conscious choice that you are ready take up the task of raising life of your own blood. >!(Unless those of people who been forced to have children or weren't mentally rational to have children, for those cases I wish the child a better future from the ones they are at now). !<

As for, Character.AI. You had all this support and I can only say for what I had saw, the community would have backed you if you didn't fold from the lawsuits. You have to decide which audience of the demographic this app is meant for.

You cannot fold and basically say "Oh we're sorry, we'll do better" before bottle-necking everything while still claiming "We are for the adults." You can't serve two masters.

You have to pick one general demographic and stay with that general demographic. Either this app is for users 18+ or 17 and under.

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Money, I think that Character.AI or at least the original teams are no longer in control of the app. I know that Google did a non-exclusive license to use their technology at the time but, they switched from improving their AI to using whatever LLM is available in the market. To add-on, I personally and This is my own opinion.

I think whoever is running the current development team doesn't really care for the long terms effects of Character.AI but want to burn quick money. Why else they would push so heavily on Character.AI plus or put so many ads and restrictions on free users that they have no choice but fold and buy plus to get that good experience and all the features. Keep in mind, Character.AI is not a public company, to my knowledge it is still a private company which means there are no shareholders or investors that could be altering the company's performance and objective.

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Once again, THIS IS MY OPINION THUS, MY TAKE ON THE CURRENT STATE OF CHARACTER.AI DO NOT TAKE THIS AS AN ATTACK OR AN OFFENSE AND I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I MAY BE WRONG BUT, THAT IS THE POINT OF DISCUSSIONS.