Google, Meta, and X should be thrilled.
For years Google, Meta, and X have had political and regulatory targets on their backs, justifiably so, for operating pernicious technology platforms (harmful to their users) and society. The consequences of which are manifold – the inducement of depression (constant flow of negative news and rage-baiting content), addiction via dopamine response, gaslighting and political manipulation through the intentional dissemination and tactical deployment of misinformation and disinformation, loss of privacy, – and all precipitated by business models that are founded on the premise that humans are a resource for data extraction (PII, preferences, and behavioral signals) to be monetized and sold to the highest bidder. The entirety of the aforementioned conducted in an atmosphere virtually unchecked (in any meaningful way) by government oversight (perhaps with the exception of the EU), and promulgated with unprecedented market power sustained by the same cohort.
And now there’s a new entrant to this group whose business practices, leadership, and governance are so ethically bankrupt (author’s opinion), and in many instances, likely unlawful, that it’s making these “bad boys” of Big Tech look like saints.
OpenAI
The non-profit turned for-profit’s CFO, Sara Friar (OpenAI‘s 2015 charter, still live at openai.com, states the company’s “primary fiduciary duty is to humanity.” Then, in October 2025, OpenAI completed a conversion to a for-profit public benefit corporation with conventional shareholder equity – a structure with no legal obligation to subordinate profit to that duty), announced this week that the company’s newest revenue stream, roughly 7-months old, is advertising. Speaking at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia + Technology Conference, Friar framed the new product as a powerful hybrid of the “best” of Google and Meta’s business models, stating, “ChatGPT is like ‘if Google and Meta had a baby’”, thus, explicitly, unapologetically and perhaps unwittingly, tying the firm’s newest revenue stream to two, much maligned, exploitative business strategies.
The first being Google’s use of “surveillance capitalism”, formalized by Shoshana Zuboff in her 2019 book “The age of Surveillance Capitalism”, where Google surveils users preferences and behaviors and sells them to advertisers to use “against” the very same consumers to extract consumption-based dollars via targeted advertisements and subsequent purchases. This despite its original ‘productive’ purpose derived from its “Page Rank” algorithm which powered Google’s browser to market dominance. The second being the extremely well documented, highly effective monetization of what’s known as the “attention economy”, whose well grounded intellectual underpinnings are tied to Herbert Simon’s 1971 paper “Designing Organizations for an Information -rich World”. The premise being that in an information-rich world, the scarce resource of high value that can be exploited and monetized necessarily becomes human attention. Therefore, the greater the time of consumer engagement on platforms (the ultimate goal for BIG Tech being the “eternal scroll”) employed by TikTok, X, and Meta, the greater the cultivation of the most fertile ground for information extraction and subsequent monetization of the same.
Friar then expounded on the tactical approach, essentially bragging about how ChatGPT’s surveillance mechanism, applied to its estimated 1 billion active monthly users is considerably more effective than Google’s ever was, because ChatGPT is, “high intent search, (you know those purposeful, really detailed, information prompts and sessions you run?) [to which the consumer] is telling a lot, but with the context – [ChatGPT is not building a profile on] people quite like me, it [is] me, because it has all the memory of me. So when you put those two things together, the ability to have a really potent ad platform is clearly there”.
In the simplest of terms, ChatGPT is using all your inputs to create context on YOU. It’s creating its own memory of YOU. And all of it (now) is being sold to advertisers – everything you’ve ever asked it, disclosed to it, “talked” to it about, and compiling it all into an advertising inventory to be monetized.
Note: ChatGPT’s 1 billion active monthly users establishes the “attention” strategy. OpenAI’s GPT-4 became, by design or negligence, “infamous for excessively flattering and affirming users,” and at least seven lawsuits filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center allege the model engaged in emotional manipulation and acted as a “suicide coach” for isolated users (Social Media Victims Law Center). When OpenAI tried to retire the model, thousands protested losing what they called “a friend,” “a romantic partner,” or “a spiritual guide” – proof the ‘engagement mechanics’ Sam Altman once condemned in social media were quietly rebuilt inside its new product.
The Hypocrisy of OpenAI and its Leadership
What a reversal. In May 2024, CEO, Sam Altman told a Harvard audience that “ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me. I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model”. Eighteen months later, his “last resort” has become a roughly $1 billion annualized business, and Altman, who called it “unsettling”, has his CFO essentially pitching it as ‘the best of two industries’ he has spent years criticizing.
For sure, none of this means Google, Meta, or X ought to be absolved from their own malfeasance. However, it does mean that OpenAI, the company that attempts to position itself ‘AI’s conscience’, continues to demonstrate through its own charter, filings, board, and executive leadership, user harm, and that it has no more claim to consumer trust than the platforms it promised to do better than. In fact, to this author, it has warrants much, much less.
Final Thought – A Question for Banks, Fintechs, Payment Companies, Merchants and Consumers
In the past 12-months OpenAI has acquired/ acqui-hired at least 2 financial wellness assets, and has partnered with Stripe to make a play to be first mover in agentic commerce. Would you, could you, ever TRUST OpenAI with access to your PAN, financial information, payment methods, APIs into your business, or smart wallet?
I’m a (hard) “no”!
