Can you live morally online?

OpenAI’s pivot toward military collaboration has prompted 2.5 million people to abandon ChatGPT. This is a meaningful demonstration of collective conscience, yet it exposes the difficulty of navigating the digital world without compromise.

The infrastructure of our lives is built on ethically fraught foundations. Google is deeply embedded in defence projects. Meta’s influence on global democracy remains a point of intense criticism. Even here on Substack, the business model relies on taking a cut from any content that generates revenue, including newsletters promoting hateful ideologies.

Public protest remains a necessary tool for accountability. However, we must acknowledge that complete ethical consistency is almost impossible within a digital economy defined by such concentrated corporate power.