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The intro (letter from the CEO) is interesting, distancing themselves from Silicon Valley: "The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most abo
by undefined1 6y ago
The intro (letter from the CEO) is interesting, distancing themselves from Silicon Valley:
"The engineering elite of Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires.
Our company was founded in Silicon Valley. But we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.
From the start, we have repeatedly turned down opportunities to sell, collect, or mine data. Other technology companies, including some of the largest in the world, have built their entire businesses on doing just that.
Software projects with our nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe, have become controversial, while companies built on advertising dollars are commonplace. For many consumer internet companies, our thoughts and inclinations, behaviors and browsing habits, are the product for sale. The slogans and marketing of many of the Valley’s largest technology firms attempt to obscure this simple fact."
- ptmcc 6y agoIsn't their entire business based on collecting, mining, and selling data to government intelligence agencies?
- amathyst 6y agoIt’s not. They don’t have any data of their own. They offer a data integration platform and then a slate of apps on top of that platform for institutions to perform analysis on their own data. They do make a few plugins that mine social media and other “open” sources but have to do a funny ownership dance so it’s the institution that is breaching the TOS rather than them.
- NeutronStar 6y agoOk, but the problem is aggregating all of the data under 1 platform. Whether you own the data or not isn't relevant when you still have access and show that data to your users.
- ptmcc 6y ago> a funny ownership dance Oh well ok then, they don't do any data collection or mining, they just sell the tools to empower three-letter agencies to do it more effectively. Conscience is clear then!
- bhupy 6y agoGenuinely curious: at what point is it "okay" to create data analysis tools that might be used by 3-letter agencies? I imagine that before Palantir came around, the analysts at these agencies did what most other analysts anywhere do and used Excel to create sophisticated pivot tables when working on {insert defense operation}. Where does it stop being okay? To the extent that it even matters, Palantir appears to at least own up to the fact that they are used by governments.
- sudosysgen 6y agoIt stops being okay when the analysis tools are built specially for the 3 letter agencies instead of for another socially useful purpose.
- bhupy 6y agoPer this S-1 filing, Palantir appears to be used by the private sector as well. > socially useful purpose Who decides what's "socially useful"?
- mrgordon 6y agoTheir early investors were the CIA. I know the point you’re trying to make but Palantir isn’t really in the gray when they have been basically a branch of the spy agencies since the beginning
- bhupy 6y agoSure, but their current operations appear to be more diversified than that -> https://www.palantir.com/solutions/ https://www.palantir.com/solutions/. Even per their S-1, their market sizing shows "Commercial" to be a substantial proportion of their aspirations: > Commercial. Our estimate of the TAM in the commercial sector is $56 billion. > Government. We estimate the TAM in the government sector, including government agencies in the United States, its allies, and in other countries abroad whose values align with liberal democracies, is $63 billion.
- ideals 6y agoYa but those are "the good guys" so it's ok to spy on citizens. Quite the gulp of koolaid to swallow straight faced
- jdc0589 6y agoI would have assumed so...they acquired a couple companies that were building webscraping + data-extraction tech a few years back.
- abeppu 6y agoI think "mining" here is used rather carelessly. In the quote, I think he intends it to be read by a general audience as extracting data from some external source, akin to scraping, i.e. mining a source for data. Maybe they don't do that. But "data mining" is also a term for analysis which finds patterns or insights in a large dataset, i.e. data is the input from which more valuable results are filtered/composed/summarized. I thought Palantir was all about that.
- ptmcc 6y ago> But "data mining" is also a term for analysis which finds patterns or insights in a large dataset, i.e. data is the input from which more valuable results are filtered/composed/summarized. I thought Palantir was all about that. Indeed, that definition is definitely how I, and most tech-oriented folks I interact with, would define data mining. First and foremost. But as stated in a different comment thread above, they don't "do" data mining, they just sell data mining tools and how-to manuals! Totally not the same thing!
- ndespres 6y agoOh, how high-minded and ethical of them, to turn down "opportunities to .. collect or mine data" like the rest of Silicon Valley does. Give me a break. It's one thing for consumer internet companies to show me an ad for mattresses because they know I searched for mattresses. It's wholly another to help government entities aggregate license plate data, run "predictive policing" programs, run the Pentagon's spy drone program, and help ICE track immigrants, as Palantir does. Frankly if given the choice I'll take the mattress ads.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ng12 6y agoI think the difference is that all those programs are run by the government using data the government owns. The LAPD is going to scan license plates and analyze the data whether Palantir helps them or not. Palantir does not by itself collect or mine data, which could be better or worse depending on how much you trust your government.
- waynesonfire 6y agonot sure if that's what their saying. my interpretation is they're not going to sell that data or the result of their analysis for advertising purposes. they'll collect or mine whatever they can get their hands, i'm certain of that. it's a data company.
- joshspankit 6y agoI find their argument somewhat disingenuous, as they are paid for that mining directly by governments (they famously created the MVP with the express intent of selling it to the US), and therefore have never needed to consider advertising.
- GuB-42 6y agoNo they won't, unless they are flat out lying. They can lie, but considering they have many customers all over the world, mostly big companies with big legal departments, it may not be the best for their business. Palantir produces data analysis tools, this is basically Excel but for bigger data sets. Microsoft doesn't get what you put into your Excel sheets (not really sure now...) and neither does Palantir with their platform. They probably have some sort of telemetry to monitor how their tools are used, to "improve user experience", like most large software vendors. But it is not related to the data being processed.
- flunhat 6y agoPalantir lost half a billion dollars last year & are notorious for overpromising to clients but ultimately under-delivering. I'd say they're still a Silicon Valley company at heart.
- sriram_sun 6y agoOne way or another all of us are going to fund Palantir, most probably through our Police department budgets.
- threatofrain 6y agoSilicon Valley is big because of products, not high-end consulting.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoYou mean services, right? Products have been out of fashion in SV for quite a while now.
- ummonk 6y agoThey’re a consulting company, not a tech company.
- polote 6y agoIt is the same as some unknown football club without money declaring that they are not interested, contrary to most of other clubs in signing Messi
- xxpor 6y ago>Software projects with our nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe Too bad the only government department concerned with that is the Department of Energy, and last I checked Palantir isn't a contract partner running any of the national labs.
- blueplanet200 6y agoIf you're referring to the fact DOE controls our nuclear arsenal, then sure. Not a lot else at DOE directly contributes to national security that I'm aware of. They sure do fund cool basic science research though.
- xxpor 6y agothe arsenal, anti-proliferation, and the fact they make the reactors that go on the subs that carry the missiles.
- typon 6y agoThis is virtue-signalling in its finest form. Palantir is a died in the wool Silicon Valley company but they don't want to burden themselves with the baggage that comes with that.
- thoughtleader31 6y agoUnlike these Silicon Valley carpetbaggers that seek to profit off people´s data, we have declined repeated opportunities to sell, collect, or mine data, and just patriotically take copious amounts of blood money from military and security forces
- blaser-waffle 6y agoThat sounds like something Peter Thiel would write
- marricks 6y agoI really hate how effective this framing is. Now we can bicker over the evils of government surveillance vs public surveillance. They are both bad and Palantir's wrongs are, if anything, far more apparent https://theintercept.com/2017/03/02/palantir-provides-the-engine-for-donald-trumps-deportation-machine/ https://theintercept.com/2017/03/02/palantir-provides-the-en...
- BrandonY 6y agoDo you find it effective? I read it as empty Republican virtue signaling. > They do not know more about...what justice requires. That's just the "You can't handle the truth" speech with the speaker reframed as the hero. > Our company was founded in Silicon Valley. But we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments. That's just saying "We're Republicans" with more words. > We have repeatedly turned down opportunities to sell, collect, or mine data. This bit's just a lie that presumably involves some esoteric reinterpretation of the phrase "mine data" in order to somehow exclude whatever sort of big data operations they perform on data to draw conclusions. What on Earth is the difference supposed to be between "mining data" and "big data analytics?" > Software projects with our nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe, have become controversial... This is just the standard Republican talking point of "liberals are insane, the police PROTECT us, and for some reason, they're OPPOSED to the police. It's lunacy!"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cpeterso 6y agoProbably putting some PR spin on the company's move from Palo Alto to Denver: https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/20/palantir-denver-hq-ipo-direct-listing/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/20/palantir-denver-hq-ipo-dir...
- opportune 6y agoYeah we work with ICE and the military, and sure we help police departments infringe your fourth amendment rights, but have you ever got an ad for zappos after searching for shoes?
- WealthVsSurvive 6y agoDon't you know anything about "justice"? Whatever that means any more. It's time to dust off an old phrase: "no taxation without representation."
- Threeve303 6y agoThis could just be a clever way to say they do not sell data, they just buy it. How useful would this software be without data from other companies?
- facethrowaway 6y agoThis letter is clearly written with dumb, naive retail investors in mind. Anyone familiar with Palantir’s history knows that their first headquarters was a building they took over from Facebook. The two companies are intertwined in many, many ways.
- avs733 6y agoThat is honestly my take away from this letter. Who, knowing anything about Palantir, reads this and is willing to trust anything they provide or give them your money? I know that S1's tend to be aspirational and the most positive/flattering framing possible but...this is just flat out an alternate reality. Anyone willing to build this level of false narrative about the history of a company is not one I would trust to deliver a true narrative about earnings or financial status.
- pstuart 6y agoPeter Thiel is one of the last people I'd pick to be a steward of justice.
- dmode 6y agoAlmost feels like they are trying to convince themselves
- cromwellian 6y agoUmm, didn't they work with Cambridge Analytica?