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Palantir blocked China’s CDH Investments from buying stock, says a lawsuit
- dude01 10y agotldr: Investor lawsuit with private company Palantir. Title is misleading. Not very interesting article.
- tyingq 10y agoAgreed. The article also shoves Peter Thiel's name into the title for unknown reasons.
- jacquesm 10y agoIt's 'Thiel', and he's the chairman, so it's not like we don't know why that name is there.
- tyingq 10y agoHe isn't a particularly central figure in the story. It's there, I suppose, to leverage animosity.
- jacquesm 10y agoNo more than mentioning any other CEO in an article about their business would. What is it about Peter Thiel that you feel would raise animosity? It's just a statement of fact.
- tyingq 10y agoHe's not the CEO. >What is it about Peter Thiel that you feel would raise animosity? The article makes sure to highlight that for anyone that might have missed it :) " It’s well-positioned to cash in on more government work thanks to Thiel’s relationship with President Donald Trump." Edit: Mentioned, sure. In the article title when he's not central to the story? Click bait.
- jacquesm 10y agoNo, he's the chairman. Like John Thompson for MS and so on. Regardless, Thiel and Palantir are joined at the hip, so expect the one to be mentioned alongside the other without attributing it immediately to malicious intent.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- popcorncolonel 10y agoVery clickbait-y title.
- valuearb 10y agoThe patents/IP theft is the interesting part, which this story doesn't cover.
- dang 10y agoThanks for pointing this out. We changed the title to more specific language from the subtitle.
- jacquesm 10y agoThere is something very much not right about a shareholder of a company like Palantir trying to sell their stake to a Chinese shareholder. That would give the Chinese fractional ownership of all the software and data that Palantir holds and processes, not much good could come of that.
- chinathrow 10y agoDo they "hold" any customer data at all? I thought their systems are deployed at a client.
- jacquesm 10y agoThey do 'on premises' and in the cloud.
- unityByFreedom 10y agoI don't think we have the details to paint one side worse than the other. Also don't see why a Chinese company can't buy shares in a company. Financial products, just like other products, are purchasable by any nationality. If Palantir is doing something that risks national security then they ought to work with the government on that. I don't think we know enough about Palantir to make a judgement there.
- jacquesm 10y ago> I don't think we have the details to paint one side worse than the other. Are you kidding? By any measure that is available China is a country that is inferior to a vast chunk of the world when it comes to civil liberties and political freedom. Palantir or a substantial portion of it in the hands of the Chinese (and, by extension in the hands of the Chinese authorities, direct or indirect) is something that you simply should not want.
- RockyMcNuts 10y agosounds like they would have been buying a minority holding through a TPG fund, and every investor doesn't have access to all the data and tech. so it depends...if a Chinese entity buys Boeing or Lockheed through an S&P fund it's not exactly a big deal
- clevernapkins 10y agoI'm confused. Seems like they have been trying to sell shares directly to parties in order to use their preferred agreements in regards to financial disclosures and annual reports? Yet if they're looking into an IPO they would be obliged to do that exact thing right?
- 092183921 10y agoAnd you lack knowledge about about own county, which has degraded from one of the most liberal states in Europe into a police state in less than a decade.
- jacquesm 10y agoWhat makes you think I lack knowledge? I even wrote about that: https://jacquesmattheij.com/wholesale-privacy-violations-in-the-european-union https://jacquesmattheij.com/wholesale-privacy-violations-in-... But why even bother arguing with an account that was created just to field a personal attack.
- raverbashing 10y ago> Complains about police state > Supports China getting your data Seems like a non-neutral party to me
- dang 10y agoPlease don't post uncivil comments to HN, and please stop making reams of throwaway accounts. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13901270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13901270 and marked it off-topic.
- 19872911 10y agoInteresting that "You lack imagination" is apparently not uncivil. FYI, that is the phrase that started the derailment of this thread. But certain people get away with doing these things on a regular basis for more than 10 years, even though they don't write particularly interesting comments.
- saycheese 10y agoAt the point a single venture is worth billions, they should be required to disclose their core financials, stockholders, holders, risks, etc.
- valuearb 10y agoThis is problematic. Who gets to say it's worth billions? Private appraisals are notoriously inaccurate and can be easily biased. Who should they disclose this information to? Shareholders can negotiate this right when they make their investment, just as founders can. Why should someone who isn't an owner have access to private information about someone elses business? Lets say you and a friend develop an innovative new startup (let's call it "Instawham"). Some friends join you and very quickly you become successful enough to have a bunch of customers and strong VC funding, but you are still a small company with a few dozen employees. You are a forward thinking CEO so you share information about the business with all of your employees, but caution them it's all proprietary and that sharing with competitors could hurt the business, so you are confident they won't share. A big company, say Facebook, offers to buy you for a few billion dollars. But besides not wanting to work for Zuckerberg, you think they are just trying to get access to your financials and business plans to compete with you and will pull the offer as soon as you disclose. So you say no. Now TechCrunch approaches you, and reminds you that by the newly passed "saycheese law" any multibillion dollar valued startup must release it's financials, shareholder lists, risk assessments, etc. They demand all of that information so they can publish it and sue you when you decline. Your lawyer tells you because of "saycheese law" you will lose, so you turn it over and Facebook launches their competitor soon after the TechCrunch article.
- raverbashing 10y agoThe naivety that only western countries with stable histories can afford Or maybe just a throwaway created by a part interested in the transaction
- 23232938829 10y agoThis comment is worthy of http://www.n-gate.com/ http://www.n-gate.com/ .
- raverbashing 10y agoThanks for creating a throwaway to put this comment, it really shows how it hit a nerve PR companies working weekends are expensive
- 9182392191 10y agoYou are the one prolonging this thread by making the preposterous assertion that a PR company would be stupid enough to create a numerical account for astroturfing. Proper astroturfing is done with "respected" accounts and is far more subtle. BTW, the '.' key on your keyboard is broken.
- raverbashing 10y agoAnother throwaway account? Hilarious. You just prolonged the discussion even more. And your manual mention the use of petty mistakes to deflect attention. It is typical after all. Respected accounts are important but maybe they're harder to come on HN? And then use throwaways for mudding the discussion Maybe the admins could start tracking the IPs of those accounts and tracing them back to the originating organization.
- Drdrdrq 10y agoI hate that I can't see the flagged and dead comments... I missed all the fun. :-/
- mhneu 10y agoIn terms of Palantir's activities and impact on society: Palantir is selling out to authoritarians. Not a company we should be very proud of. http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-adviser-peter-thiels-palantir-technologies-aid-ice-immigration-raids-using-2501431 http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-adviser-peter-thiels-palantir-t... Trump Adviser Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies To Aid ICE In Immigration Raids Using Surveillance And Data Analysis
- saltyworker 10y agoAlternate Title: Trump Adviser Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies To Aid ICE in enforcing Country's Immigration Statutes Using Data Analysis & Available Metadata
- hwillis 10y agoSo... Should Google be reporting the addresses of people who search for drugs? Should Facebook be informing the TSA about people's religion? Do you really want corporations spying on you for the government even more than they currently do?
- ihsw2 10y agoThose are loaded questions. Corporations already provide user data when provided a valid court order to do so, they have been doing it for decades.
- hwillis 10y agoI tacitly acknowledged that in my post with "even more". There is a substantial, I would say extreme, difference between submitting to a court order and proactively providing data to the government.
- jimmywanger 10y ago> Should Google be reporting the addresses of people who search for drugs? Should Facebook be informing the TSA about people's religion? This is a false equivalence, as searching for drugs is not actually illegal, nor is believing in a certain faith. A better analogy would be "Should Google be reporting the addresses of people who are distributing child pornography? Should Facebook be informing the TSA of people who are planning to bomb a plane?" In both cases, the answers is yes, and they are almost legally obligated to if they have clear evidence of wrong-doing.
- hendzen 10y agoIf you resist going public for over a decade despite doing billions in revenue you are going to have investors who are upset about their inability to cash out.
- bane 10y agoIt's almost like the company is allergic to receiving external market validation of its claimed valuation. They're happy to hold internal company "liquidation events" where employees can sell to employees, and take on massive yearly fund raising events to hush hush funds, but they never seem to want to let on in any public way what they're actually worth on the real market.