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Comment by MoltenMan | Hacker News Reader

I can't say I understand the Palantir hate. Isn't it just a database analytics SaaS? Why not hate Google as well because government employees who do things you don't like use Google? Is the Palantir hate just manufactured pointless rage or is there an actual reason behind it?

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Palantir have the means and at least in the U. S. the call to compile a database combining personal data over many (public) agencies, making a comprehensive surveillance of a population possible: https://web.archive.org/web/20250530212437/https://www.nytim...

I think a fair number of people who hate Palantir do hate Google too.

Palantir is a spyware company and the CEO Alex Karp has explicitly said that thier goal is to use their tooling to create fear in people and kill people (i.e people deemed enemies of the United States)

Are you talking about the quote where he referred to people brining Fentanyl in that is killing people?

I didn't see anything wrong with his little speech.

Nope, I'm talking about this, its an older video

https://youtu.be/G5gC_fParbY

with a CEO that openly boast their product is great at getting data to kill people, what's there not to hate?

Google at least pretends to "not be evil".

Palantir is proud of their work on the ICE contract.

Because the founders are evil and should in in prison?

You should probably hate Google too, but I think a lot of Palantir hate comes from (well deserved) hatred for Peter Thiel, who has injected himself directly into conservative politics.

Billionaires buying their way into the political system should be hated implicitly, no matter their political affiliation.

Palantir is more directly involved in the surveillance state and military industrial complex.

Not saying Google isn't, but it's at least not as public or blatant, and is much less of what Google does overall.

Tbh I think public and blatant is preferable.

Palantir makes AI to determine if who you are auto droning is a valid target or not. You can imagine why people dislike that, especially given that it's been deployed in Palestine

Would you prefer that militaries have less-capable software to make targeting decisions?

I would prefer that militaries do not deliberately genocide civilians and antagonize non-combatants.

That's a "motherhood statement"[1] - you haven't answered the question.

Militaries make targeting decisions with data. That's entirely separate to whether they have been ordered by civilian government to target something, and Palantir do not control that part of decision making (you as a voter do! You did vote right?)

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/motherhood_statement

No it’s not. It’s totally conceivable that the (perceived) quality of targeting data would contribute to the decision of whether to run a mission at all, and if so how extensively.

isn’t that essentially true of any technology that reduces the civilian casualties of a conflict?

The companies involved definitely want you to think that part of their noble goal is reducing civilian casualties. As far as I can see, though, that is pure propaganda.

You can reduce civilian casualties by reducing the number of people considered civilians.

i am not saying that is the case here, all i am saying is that your argument would apply to any technology that lets you better differentiate/target enemies vs. civilians, which suggests to me it is overbroad.

You are reading perhaps more generality than I intended. To be clear, I am talking about the present greater-Anglo-American military-industrial complex, driven by present ideologies, in which the distinction between “enemy” and “civilian” itself is extremely debatable.

Absolutely.

And that the people who stand to benefit the most from another war might want to filter/target that data in a way to make that more probable?

I mean, I know it's a stretch. Especially with how benevolent our current class of billionaires are. But just imagine a guy who thinks money is more important than anything else. I know... another stretch. lol.

> > Palantir do not control that part of decision making (you as a voter do! You did vote right?)

You're not actually suggesting that the company providing the data isn't at all part of that process, are you?

Can you, for a second, imagine a company collecting/forwarding only data that's beneficial to it's core objective? Especially one whose led by a guy who has quite literally benefits off of a war????

I am 100% sure you have absolutely no idea what Palantir actually do, and I suggest you go actually read about it. There's plenty of resources out there which will explain in considerable detail what the product is, what the services are, how the services get provided, and the benefits (for example one of Palantir's premier operations is "forward deployed engineers" - which is super-handy for organizations which work in government because it means they come to you and do the installs and setup, but don't keep or even have access to any of the data - the relationship is between you and the specific employees - who in turn need to have Federal clearances - and not Palantir corporate).

This arrangement is extremely conventional, but most company's hate doing it and so don't unless they're operating with the expertise to manage those types of orgs (which is usually only profitable if you have a unique advantage or specialize in seeking a lot of contracts and then navigate the data handling rules to realize - hopefully - some synergies).

I don't like Thiel, but his detractors are also very obviously ignorant as to how any of the Federal government normally works.

lol Found Karpas burner account

You're not actually contending that people at Palantir don't need clearances are you?

How capable it is do you think at this moment. I guess we need 30 more years for software to get better, so less than 20 thousand children dies in the Gaza genocide.

Perhaps it would be preferable at least to not mix civilian health data or regular business data, with mass surveillance data, and with military industrial complex and kill chain data. It would make sense to have an interest in keeping different kinds of personal data in separate places and not have it thrown around companies with quite different interests or collected together within some company that's involved in quite different industries. So why does it not make sense to apologists of this company?

Are you claiming palantir will put a back door in their software and steal NHS data?

If so, is there any example of them ever doing this to a customer, or is it baseless speculation?

Alternatively, are you climing the NHS is giving planter data and usage rights?

It doesn't matter whether they do or not, the desire to keep separate things separate could be there as is. It might as well not be any of that but just about the kinds of things some companies are involved in.

Again, kind of amusing how that immediately devolves into "are you making an accusation".

Palantir might just pretty up the display of the data that is aggregated by other vendors, which source their data from other vendors, who collect their data from "opt-in" services, which technically explain how they work somewhere in a 200 page ToS. But at some point you gotta look at the sum of the incremental issues and say enough is enough.

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