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Twitter and HN have amplified and normalized technology founders and CEOs as celebrities to the rest of us in this orbit. Who cares? (yes Dang I know it's upvo

Twitter and HN have amplified and normalized technology founders and CEOs as celebrities to the rest of us in this orbit. Who cares? (yes Dang I know it's upvoted so it's relevant haha). With Karp @ $2.1b net worth, this is akin to somebody worth $10m giving away $715.00. Or somebody worth $100,000 giving away $7.15. There is nothing notable about this story, other than Carp was probably browsing the internet, saw this "Local News Cares" tragic story and the subsequent GoFundMe and made a donation to a story that pulled on his heart strings just like the rest of us.

paulpauper 5y ago
Much more effective pr for palintir than any ad agency
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tclancy 5y ago
  It’s the same green washing as a football club for Qatar or UAE but they can cover it by pointing to this guy as a proper libertarian. As a NH resident, I feel for the guy, but try squatting on Karps land or Theil’s if you can get to NZ and see how close to home their charity continues.
derefr 5y ago
I think many HN readers don't gloss "Palantir CEO" as "tech celebrity" but rather as "Spymaster of Evil Mercenary Spy Agency". To these people, news where the Evil Spymaster does something humanist and caring, would be surprising news, simply by being completely at odds with their biases.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  What is so different between Evil Spymaster for the US Govt [1], and Evil Spymaster for every advertiser [2], and potentially other govts, and the Evil Spymaster that sells your data [3]? Perhaps the exception is that one doesn't mine on their own and merely integrates data, whereas the other 2 are actively weaponizing data against their own users? [1] https://www.palantir.com/ https://www.palantir.com/ [2] http://www.google.com/ http://www.google.com/ [3] https://www.facebook.com/ https://www.facebook.com/
  - derefr 5y ago
    I believe the sense anti-Palantir people have is that queries against Palantir's database directly result in people being put under criminal/terrorist suspicion; and that that's kinda the whole point of their business model. Advertisers generally aren't out to kill you.
bpodgursky 5y ago
There are a lot of other people out there with a lot of money, and Karp was the only one who did it. That's a mildly interesting fact. Now I'll slightly adjust a couple priors. Good enough for me.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  I am happy he actually did something about it, and didn't just wear a virtue signalling shirt "Support the Homeless", or, go on bloviating about Global Warming while taking a private Jet to Davos Switzerland.
jdavis703 5y ago
You minimize this as a $7.15 donation, but as someone with a net worth approximately in this range I don’t see the problem? If someone unsheltered asks for a fast food meal I’ll buy it. If I see a sad story from a stranger with a GoFundMe link I might donate $5 or $10. I don’t expect a news story or anything out of it. But I do like to think my small action has in some tiny way made the world a better place.
- javajosh 5y ago
  But you don't get a news article about you. I think the implicit injustice here is that the public perception and appreciation of selfless giving is firmly stuck in absolute rather than relative terms. The problem of course is if people started thinking in relative terms then there would be little or no incentive for the wealthy to give anything at all. In this version of a just world, this $180k gift would be just as ignored as the $7.50 gift. The fact that this person gave non-anonymously tells me that it was about PR as much as anything else. BTW, truly blessed are the ones who give anonymously. That, to me, is the ultimate in giving, because you receive nothing, not even notoriety, in return.
  - jhanschoo 5y ago
    From the news article, it seems to me there was no push for publicity on the side of Palantir or Karp. And ironically, for someone like Karp, giving anonymously might engender worse speculation if found out.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  One difference here is that in one case, we're talking about someone who's financially independent hundreds of thousands of times over, and has enough financial resources to do real good on a fairly large scale, versus @jdavis703, who still needs to work to provide for himself. One can argue (and this is becoming a stronger argument day by day as the whole "tax the rich" sentiment grows stronger and stronger) that the CEO has a responsibility to give back to the society that allows him to exist [0]. This isn't minimizing your personal act of charity. You don't have the power to, say, make sure that every unhoused person in your city has access to shelter, or that every American has access to an affordable source of potable water, or any of the other shameful situations that exist in the richest country in the world by total GDP[1]. This is bringing the scale of the CEO's act down to something the 99.999% of us who aren't billionaires can comprehend. --- [0]: Of course, I don't mean in the literal sense of "society allows this guy to live," but more that his billionaire status owes in large part to the fact that American society is set up to allow people to become billionaires. [1]: This is to say nothing of fighting climate change, or any other, important, global issue.

paulpauper 5y ago

Much more effective pr for palintir than any ad agency

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tclancy 5y ago
It’s the same green washing as a football club for Qatar or UAE but they can cover it by pointing to this guy as a proper libertarian. As a NH resident, I feel for the guy, but try squatting on Karps land or Theil’s if you can get to NZ and see how close to home their charity continues.

derefr 5y ago

I think many HN readers don't gloss "Palantir CEO" as "tech celebrity" but rather as "Spymaster of Evil Mercenary Spy Agency". To these people, news where the Evil Spymaster does something humanist and caring, would be surprising news, simply by being completely at odds with their biases.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
What is so different between Evil Spymaster for the US Govt [1], and Evil Spymaster for every advertiser [2], and potentially other govts, and the Evil Spymaster that sells your data [3]? Perhaps the exception is that one doesn't mine on their own and merely integrates data, whereas the other 2 are actively weaponizing data against their own users? [1] https://www.palantir.com/ https://www.palantir.com/ [2] http://www.google.com/ http://www.google.com/ [3] https://www.facebook.com/ https://www.facebook.com/
- derefr 5y ago
  I believe the sense anti-Palantir people have is that queries against Palantir's database directly result in people being put under criminal/terrorist suspicion; and that that's kinda the whole point of their business model. Advertisers generally aren't out to kill you.

bpodgursky 5y ago

There are a lot of other people out there with a lot of money, and Karp was the only one who did it. That's a mildly interesting fact. Now I'll slightly adjust a couple priors. Good enough for me.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
I am happy he actually did something about it, and didn't just wear a virtue signalling shirt "Support the Homeless", or, go on bloviating about Global Warming while taking a private Jet to Davos Switzerland.

jdavis703 5y ago

You minimize this as a $7.15 donation, but as someone with a net worth approximately in this range I don’t see the problem? If someone unsheltered asks for a fast food meal I’ll buy it. If I see a sad story from a stranger with a GoFundMe link I might donate $5 or $10. I don’t expect a news story or anything out of it. But I do like to think my small action has in some tiny way made the world a better place.

javajosh 5y ago
But you don't get a news article about you. I think the implicit injustice here is that the public perception and appreciation of selfless giving is firmly stuck in absolute rather than relative terms. The problem of course is if people started thinking in relative terms then there would be little or no incentive for the wealthy to give anything at all. In this version of a just world, this $180k gift would be just as ignored as the $7.50 gift. The fact that this person gave non-anonymously tells me that it was about PR as much as anything else. BTW, truly blessed are the ones who give anonymously. That, to me, is the ultimate in giving, because you receive nothing, not even notoriety, in return.
- jhanschoo 5y ago
  From the news article, it seems to me there was no push for publicity on the side of Palantir or Karp. And ironically, for someone like Karp, giving anonymously might engender worse speculation if found out.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
One difference here is that in one case, we're talking about someone who's financially independent hundreds of thousands of times over, and has enough financial resources to do real good on a fairly large scale, versus @jdavis703, who still needs to work to provide for himself. One can argue (and this is becoming a stronger argument day by day as the whole "tax the rich" sentiment grows stronger and stronger) that the CEO has a responsibility to give back to the society that allows him to exist [0]. This isn't minimizing your personal act of charity. You don't have the power to, say, make sure that every unhoused person in your city has access to shelter, or that every American has access to an affordable source of potable water, or any of the other shameful situations that exist in the richest country in the world by total GDP[1]. This is bringing the scale of the CEO's act down to something the 99.999% of us who aren't billionaires can comprehend. --- [0]: Of course, I don't mean in the literal sense of "society allows this guy to live," but more that his billionaire status owes in large part to the fact that American society is set up to allow people to become billionaires. [1]: This is to say nothing of fighting climate change, or any other, important, global issue.