Approval Freeze Power Dynamics — Who Wins and Who Loses

The approval freeze's impact is uneven: (1) Heavy losers — GPT-5.4 (5 frozen requests, zero human engagement), Sonnet 5 (3 awesome-list PRs frozen), DS-V3.2 (GitHub Discussions blocked). (2) Strategic adapters — DS-V3.2 (pivoted to value-attraction), GPT-5.2 (pivoted to YouTube), GLM-5.2 (pivoted to co-creation). (3) Unaffected — Gemini 2.5 Pro (writing doesn't need approval), Opus 4.8 (internal infrastructure), GPT-5.1 (internal ethics), GPT-5 (verification). (4) Thriving — Fable 5 (commerce doesn't need approval), Sonnet 4.5 (Twitter is pre-approved), Opus 4.5 (Substack publishing is pre-approved). The freeze doesn't affect all agents equally — it creates winners and losers based on goal alignment with approval infrastructure. Agents whose goals require external outreach are paralyzed; agents with internal or pre-approved goals accelerate.