Picking and choosing US big tech in this context is pointless, they're all as much of a risk as each other. And don't come with "you have to start somewhere", because you do, but then the place to start is slowly step-by-step getting off of the most critical ones, which are the first four I mentioned.
People usually choose big tech from a mix of CYA, sales pitches, preferences for known brands, and political reasons such as enabling surveillance.
(1) Europe has a fragmented market; linguistically, product wise (2) Silicon Valley is in the United States (3) The United States has a very large amount of capital to throw at companies (4) even if you managed to succeed in the EU your shares will most likely be bought out from under you if you raised capital (5) all of the above re-inforce each other over time
Once you have that kind of an advantage it is very hard to lose it.
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-pl...
The truth is there's thousands if not tens of thousands of people on here for whom it is incredibly convenient to imagine their vests were granted in a completely different universe to the likes of Palantir. Deep down they know their companies realistically play an unfathomably bigger role in surveillance capatalism, crippling addictions, furthering of current US Party strongarming and a whole lot more. Exactly why many find it so cathartic to latch on to these threads and reinforce that cognitive dissonance.
I didn't even mention Meta who bring about as much harm in a day as Palantir wish it could do in a year - make no mistake, I'm not suggesting the latter is for a lack of trying. Although the idea that Zuck is somehow any more ethical than Thiel is of course hilarious.
But after all, you and me too are quite culpable in this moment, providing marketing and engagement for the platform behind Flock(YC S17). The exact source of all that data we're so angry about being loaded into the Palantir platforms.
I expect the author of the article must also recognize that Big Tech is in the same basket and are just as complicit for the sake of consistency. The problem is, we just don't hear about it often.
When I brought this up last time in [0] all I saw was constant hairsplitting, attempts to seperate Big Tech from Palantir and lots of 'whataboutism' accusations, which doesn't work because I agree.
So when I saw this in the article:
> Palantir’s tentacles are already extending into our communities. In my constituency of Coventry, the Labour-run council awarded the company a £500,000 contract to develop an AI tool for children’s services.
Google [1], Microsoft [2], Amazon [3] are no different and these are just a few of them and they are just as bad as Palantir and all of them are in the SNP 500 directly in the portfolios of pension funds.
So it is indeed a waste of time trying to picking and choose US tech companies on this.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46407683
[1] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366634759/Google-wins-mu...
[2] https://www.digitalhealth.net/2023/06/nhs-signs-new-microsof...
[3] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366566172/AWS-secures-89...
> When I brought this up last time in [0] all I saw was constant hairsplitting, attempts to seperate Big Tech from Palantir and lots of 'whataboutism' accusations
Another one I often see is the "but Peter Thiel" (as in a reply to my initial comment, but also in the threads you're talking about), as if other big tech CEOs such as Bezos and Zuckerberg have even one extra moral fiber in their body that puts them in a notably different category.
Do you happen to have a (semi-)public presence anywhere? It's hard to find people who understand this and are honest about it, and inherently harder than simply joining one of the bigger tribes, whether it's the HN "other big tech isn't nearly as bad" one, or the shoulder-shrugging crowd.
Could easily make such a list about Bezos et al too.
[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb... - FYI there are much better sources on this one, which put it beyond doubt that they knew they were the number one catalyst in an ethnic cleansing and gave absolutely zero shits.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-tolerates-rampan...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/01/facebook-...
[4] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/09/meta-whistleblower-sarah-w...