You’re right on the core of the issue. I think there has been some temporal stripping of context: that ‘last resort’ needs to be considered against their alternatives.
OpenAI isn’t a business scaling a popular website to profitability, that’s Reddit or Slashdot. OpenAI was promising revolutionary product technology that was breathlessly close to AGI and would eliminate positions and automate coding and, and, and…
Having your next-gen AGI do-it-all platform mature into hoping to recreate the business model of Reddit should raise eyebrows, and let everyone know about the state of The Emperors wardrobe.
They could be building an Office killer and consumer oriented OS’s & ecosystem for near infinite money… they are running ads. Ads for porn and dick pills? Not yet, that’d be another last resort.