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What does Palantir actually do?
- wkat4242 1y agohttps://archive.ph/6ljwy https://archive.ph/6ljwy
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago> Palantir’s employees are also sometimes called “hobbits.” According to one former employee, a common internal motto in Palantir’s early days was “Save the Shire,” a reference to the hobbit homeland, which they say was a rallying cry that reflected the company’s ethos at the time. this seems so delusional and divorced from the source material that i sometimes wonder if any of these people are familiar with it at all. edit to clarify: "They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with tools."
- psunavy03 1y agoOr you could try to understand why they would think this way, and perhaps get an understanding of how people you utterly disagree with reason and think.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoi'm not talking about whether i think palantir or its employees are good or bad. "They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with tools." - Concerning Hobbits The Scouring Of The Shire is the account of anti-industrial direct action, for Iluvatar's sake.
- egypturnash 1y agoElon Musk is a huge fan of Iain Banks’ Culture books and completely misses the fact that it’s profoundly anti-capitalist and that the villain in Surface Detail is basically him. Rich tech nerds are really good at missing the points being made by the sf/f books they claim to love.
- kjellsbells 1y agoComing soon: The Left Hand of Darkness, where manly men cross the ice together! Sigh.
- gdbsjjdn 1y agoWe've finally built the Torment Nexus from the sci-fi classic, Don't Build The Torment Nexus.
- sidibe 1y agoIt's possible he never actually read them? Another thing Elon would hate that I vaguely remember from one of the Culture books is one of the characters is considered weird for never having been the other sex.
- becurious 1y agoAnd then there’s the apex sex in The Player Of Games. I think at least Excession has one of the protagonists transition at the end of the novel.
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- grafmax 1y agoBeing willing to use any means necessary means to fight your enemies - building software to support mass surveillance, genocide, and concentration camps - means you’re no longer fighting for moral principles - you’re fighting for power. In that regard I do think a closer reading of the source material does have something to teach these people.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- thrown-0825 1y agoPeter Thiel is a an authoritarian loser and Tolkien would have hated his guts.
- therobots927 1y agoI think he is more than aware of the fact that he’s the villain in this story. The kool-aid drinking employees of his portfolio companies on the other hand are a different story…
- thrown-0825 1y agoI dont think so, hes pretty obviously a sociopath and they typically struggle with self awareness and tend to view themselves as victims.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoHe named his data company after the seeing stones that are almost exclusively associated with the Eye of Sauron. I get the impression he doesn't much care if people see him as a villain.
- qzw 1y agoSome people read a story like LotR and think, “If I were Sauron, I would do such and such, and I would’ve won.” A few of these people have the means to actually live out that scenario.
- terminalshort 1y ago> almost exclusively associated with the Eye of Sauron Only in the movies.
- defrost 1y agoThe movies didn't fully explore just how addictive and warping seeing stones could be. In The Silmarillion the point was made that they misled users who were weak while allowing users who were strong to mislead others. Objective unbiased use for the greater good of all, while possible, was extremely rare. The stones were an unreliable guide to action, since what was not shown could be more important than what was selectively presented. A risk lay in the fact that users with sufficient power could choose what to show and what to conceal to other stones. \* Which nails a great issue with the concentration of data and data interpretation in the hands of a self selected few. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant%C3%ADr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant%C3%ADr
- qaq 1y agoPalantir is a consulting shop that positions itself as a tech company
- Duhck 1y agoYes, but... They also have one of the most profitable business models the world has ever seen. Their RPE (revenue per employee) is roughly $1mm and growing at a 50% YoY rate... They heavily use technology as leverage for insane margin growth. 90% rule of 40 as well.
- elliotto 1y agoYeah turns out leeching off the surveillance state makes heaps of money. Great business model
- jesterson 1y ago[flagged]
- dkiebd 1y ago[flagged]
- jesterson 1y agoSpot on.
- lantry 1y agoDon't be afraid to say what you believe! let's bring this out in the open. you're saying that women shouldn't be allowed to vote? I feel so sorry for you people. You need to find some constructive way to deal with your issues, instead of blaming your insecurities on women.
- elliotto 1y ago
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- some_furry 1y agoIf you want to know what Palantir actually does, ask its critics. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/surveillance-us-national-security https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/survei...
- ianks 1y agoI’d be curious to hear a follow-up article about what Palantir doesn’t do. For better or worse, I think we are living in a time where companies should take principled stands about anti-features. It’s good to build in all of these optional data and privacy knobs, but I fear that’s not enough.
- jeffrallen 1y ago[flagged]
- inemesitaffia 1y ago[flagged]
- hatthew 1y agoTFA mentions the most important points, which are that Palantir doesn't provide any data or act on any data.
- Lammy 1y agoThey sell the capability to do this on a global scale: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
- jmclnx 1y agoFrom the article >What it’s ultimately selling them is not just software, but the idea of a seamless, almost magical solution to complex problems Sound like to me all it does is funnel our tax dollars to the top 1%. They seem to be involved with the project below. So I cannot help to believe these people with Trump's Admin. is a massive corruption operation on steroids. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-unraveling-two-pentagon-projects-may-result-costly-do-over-2025-08-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-unraveling-two-pentagon... No wonder the deficit is expanding.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- LearnYouALisp 1y ago> WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - ...to cancel two nearly complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800 million combined [for HR systems]... > The reason for the unusual move: officials at those departments, who have so far put the existing projects on hold, want other firms, including Salesforce and billionaire Peter Thiel's Palantir, to have a chance to win similar projects, which could amount to a costly do-over, according to seven sources familiar with the matter. "To have a chance"?! > Exodus 23:8 ESV > And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.
- yunwal 1y agoOk so like what does Palantir actually do? From what I understand Palantir is basically a data consulting company with a suite of data mining/visualization tools at its core. Essentially, it sends an engineer armed with these tools into the customer organization’s various disparate databases, funnels all that data to one tool, and then gives you some nice graphs or whatever. IMO it’s mostly bullshit, which is why they make all their customers sign ndas. I’ve still never met anyone who worked with them that could tell me any significant value they brought.
- jinushaun 1y agoSounds like a lot of government contractors.
- thrown-0825 1y agoWhat do you think DOGE was for?
- birn559 1y agoDismantling/Crippling institutions and fulfilling wet dreams of power of narcissistic people.
- thrown-0825 1y agoits no longer a dream
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jeltz 1y agoTo dismantle efficient government agencies and oversight so it is easier for companies like Palantir to scam the government.
- filoleg 1y ago
- peroids 1y agoIf anyone wants inside info on what they actually dm me, I have to work with their products and can probably give you all the dirt
- Tiberium 1y agoHN doesn't have DMs :)
- ValveFan6969 1y ago[dead]
- mgh2 1y agoArticle: > "Got a Tip? Are you a current or former Palantir employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at carolinehaskins.61."
- jpfromlondon 1y agoseems like a trap.
- neilv 1y agoDon't do this. Use Wikipedia to vet the close connections of whatever news outlet you were considering, and stop vetting only once you realize that you almost made a terrible mistake by talking to a reporter there. Forget whatever dirt you think you know (it doesn't matter in the current political environment), donate your blood money to a good cause, and go do something you feel better about, but without stepping on the toes of the scariest people.
- UltraSane 1y agoIs there software any good? By good I would use Splunk as a reference, which I consider very good.
- htrp 1y agoPalantir is a tech platform that consumes data from their clients in return for providing high level data-driven insights. They assign FDEs (or consultants) to really learn the details of a customers data. Foundry allows them to get single pane view of the data in an org and they actually have both the tech and engineering skills to do the dirty data cleaning jobs. For an extravagant fee, you give them your data, they clean it for you, and then those same FDEs can tell you interesting things that you should have known, had you actually done proper data architecture in the first place.
- _boffin_ 1y ago> had you actually done proper data architecture in the first place. so beautiful.
- nemothekid 1y ago>For an extravagant fee, you give them your data, they clean it for you, and then those same FDEs can tell you interesting things that you should have known, had you actually done proper data architecture in the first place. AFAIK, this is the most succinct description of Palantir I've read. A looser-fitting analogy is they come in, replace whatever the hell you were trying to use SAP for with actually competent software. Most "FDEs" can't explain what the company does because what they did was work at $CLIENT for 18 months ripping apart all their internal software with Palantir building blocks.
- gundmc 1y agoIt sounds like fundamentally SAP and Palantir target different use cases though? While SAP has OLAP functions, their bread and butter is highly domain-specific and transactional.
- utilize1808 1y agoSo it's outsourced data science?
- internetter 1y ago
- UltraSane 1y agoBest I have been able to determine is they use an in-house developed graph DB and ontologies and a lot of experience to link and analyze data in very powerful ways.
- SJC_Hacker 1y agoI highly suspect all these Big Data companies are consulting for Big Companies that are doing things that if the average citizen was aware of, would be absolutely horrified Which is why they speak in business lingo / vague generalities and not give examples, its to hide the real intent
- xenospn 1y agoThe average citizen cares about the cost of eggs and not much else.
- next_xibalba 1y agoUpon what evidence are your suspicions based?
- DrammBA 1y agoDoes suspicion require evidence?
- next_xibalba 1y agoI suppose it depends on how the suspicions are impacting one's life and those around them. If I suspect my wife is cheating on me (without evidence) but keep that suspicion to myself and treat her no differently than before, that might be OK. But if I treat her accordingly and tell her friends, family, and colleagues about my suspicions, that is probably not good!
- radicaldreamer 1y agoI don't think its all that sophisticated. The reason Palantir pairs up its services with consultants is that it's not that useful or sophisticated, the consultant's job is to spice it up so it seems like the data and tooling is more valuable than it actually is. It's the same model as McKinsey etc, the value add is in feeling like you're getting value out of the money you're spending and half of that is being marketed to personally by the consultant and getting glossy presentations, reports, and dashboards.
- mirzap 1y agoRecently, I have been increasingly associating Palantir with the 'Samaritan' from Person of Interest, an evil entity monitoring everyone in the digital world, collecting data, and selling it to authoritarian regimes.
- tamishungry 1y agosuch a great show!
- fleaaa 1y agoI've always associated Palantir with Dark Knight Sonar vision system. This one might be working better than the fictional one I suppose. It's such a disgusting modern day leviathan, I roll my eyes to the back of my head when people casually say you should buy their stock
- Henchman21 1y agoNot the corrupted seeing-stones from LotR, eh? Do so few really understand that reference??
- supercanuck 1y agoI was joking with a friend that one of their competitive advantages is that it is a mediocre data platform but their critics get gang stalked.
- raffael_de 1y agoGiven that the world is headed towards a surveillance dystopia and Peter Thiel being involved I think I should buy some stocks now. What happened end of 2024 that kicked off its price hike?
- GloriousMEEPT 1y agoPalantir donated millions to the Trump campaign and he won.
- Hikikomori 1y agoVance worked for Thiel and was funded by him. They're both friends with Curtis yarvin.
- pesus 1y agoI'd be willing to bet they did much more than donate behind the scenes.
- platevoltage 1y agoI hope that's a rhetorical question.
- mrguyorama 1y ago>What happened end of 2024 that kicked off its price hike? Owning the vice president tends to look pretty damn good on a balance sheet. Especially when that admin is pretty openly running pump and dumps on wall street.
- mgh2 1y agoMix of Trump winning, prospects for investing in ICE, policing, defense and AI hype Another stock on this trend: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/axon-reports-q2-2025-revenue-200100494.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/axon-reports-q2-2025-revenue-...
- FergusArgyll 1y agoRevenue growth of 20-40% a quarter EPS Growth of 100% a quarter Earning beat after earning beat, increased guidance after increased guidance
- nazgulsenpai 1y agoYou can just look at their website -- it's surprisingly in depth even with their targeting systems and stuff. It's wild how open they are about it.
- progbits 1y agohttps://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/ https://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/ ctrl-f "kill chain" and watch the video. They have a fucking kanban board for bombing people.
- m463 1y agoI think of MAD and how it creates peace. In the same way, do people who do things to paint targets on their foreheads read this stuff, and think twice? A lot of criminals are rational.
- geetee 1y agoI mean, let's be realistic.... should they just use an excel spreadsheet?
- progbits 1y agoBack in my day we killed people using the waterfall method and we liked it.
- nradov 1y agoHa ha but you're not wrong. The waterfall methodology — to the extent that it ever existed as a real thing rather than a strawman for agile consultants to criticize — was originally defined to produce predictable results for complex defense software projects. It actually sort of worked some of the time.
- infecto 1y agoIs it that surprising? Ignoring war being good or bad, you would assume there needs to be some method to the madness. I assume before computers this meant a central com center that kept track of everything using humans and chalkboards or tables.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dogman144 1y agoA helpful framework I’ve liked is - Palantir was incredible technology during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for putting the proverbial warheads on foreheads of insurgents with terrible SIGINT practices and a lot of generated data. You could build and analyze graphs of insurgent networks that were tangibly powerful - After that, in my mind what was very similar tech was sold to US domestic police, corporate insider threat teams, whatever. As I recall it had uneven adoption due to expense - Now in 2025, that same tech is slated to have broad access to American citizen data under an entirely trustable and stable executive branch. With those face value facts, a capable technical mind like those in hackernews could draw logical conclusions. To put a pin in it - threat modeling for what you say and do online as this era progresses is interesting to consider. Now with tech like this, your threat model is now you + your friends. Who’s the “radical” in your friend group, and is the group chat on unencrypted systems? Consider what your graph would be, and how much do you trust tech like this ran by either the current team or the other team.
- spencerflem 1y agoRelated: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lwekzzruji2j https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lwekzzruji2j
- dogman144 1y agoMilitary integration with law enforcement -> military tech licenses -> focus on cities -> cities have troves of SIGINT Unencrypted group chat -> one friend hates one party -> another friend loves to talk about illegal habits -> tool hoovering it all up -> illegal habits friend is the pretext to look at politics friend Clear as day, as this is what caused a bad time for insurgents in an actual war. Makes a lot of sense to apply it domestically! Tread on me.
- jimt1234 1y agoApparently crime only happens in big cities. It's weird, because where I grew up in rural Missouri, every-other dipshit was a meth junkie, robbing houses to support their addiction. But, well, maybe I just invented all that with my crazy imagination.
- adamnemecek 1y agoPalantir is a FAAS, fascism-as-a-service provider.
- lenerdenator 1y agoThey track you, and not to sell you stuff.
- DesiLurker 1y agobut to sell you as serfs.
- jihadjihad 1y agoWasn't there a blog post on HN a while back from someone who worked there early on in their career, where they traveled around and built a bunch of tools to help manage data etc.? I thought it was an interesting lens to look through. Can't recall the post, though.
- asveikau 1y agoIt made it sound like what they did is drop ship into a company, destroy all their existing procedures, and rush through a half assed piece of software to replace them. It sounded a lot like the DOGE playbook. From that vantage point I became skeptical that they did anything good for their clients. It's like "douchebag outsourcing consultant as a service".
- Temporary_31337 1y agoFWIW, I am in a project like this where we a re given free will to use whatever it takes to deliver quickly and ignore the company internal procedures etc - we're using agile as it should be done (principles not just verbiage) so for example we don't have meetings unless needed etc. Needless to say we've shipped our first product a few months back and now it's v2 and now some of the team is moving on to other areas. Disruption can be good you know....
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- asveikau 1y agoProbably a case where you don't understand what it is you broke. Seen this too much to have any other sort of reaction. People come in without fully understanding what the existing solution does. They get overconfident that they can solve it better. They throw out the thing that is fulfilling the needs of many people. Their rewrite breaks a bunch of stuff they don't know about. But they also set the metrics for success so they've judged themselves to be successful. If the people affected by their breakage ever manage to get back in touch, the guy that broke them is already long gone.
- jackmottatx 1y ago[dead]
- Fomite 1y ago"Evil"
- AtNightWeCode 1y agoThey aggregate data and use it to hurt people. They use Facebook data for instance. If they collected the data or a "customer" did it does not really matter to me at least.
- dboreham 1y agoFolks here were likely mostly not born yet, but note the beginnings of internet search (not Google iirc) were defense surveillance projects. Basically when the internet took off at the retail level anyone that had been working on black mass surveillance projects flipped over to working on internet search. Same for internet map/google earth type systems. I saw a google-earth-like product demonstrated (possibly wasn't supposed to see it at the time) in 1989.
- owlninja 1y agoI was surprised to hear the name Palantir being thrown around where I work (manufacturing company) and I looked it up and they have something called 'Foundry' for shop floors. Reading the other comments here plus seeing that makes me just see them as another consulting company that wants to get its claws in you and then actually start building the things they advertise at an incredibly high price. They have some skills and want to just get into business wherever there is a business. The demo was certainly slick but very short on specifics, and the sales people seemed top notch (you know the type).
- diogenes_atx 1y agoPalantir's business operations are not a secret, despite the company's latest efforts at obfuscation. In fact, there is a recent academic study about Palantir and the surveillance data industry: Sarah Brayne (2020) Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing, Oxford University Press https://www.amazon.com/Predict-Surveil-Discretion-Future-Policing/dp/0190684097?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.o9LFaH8f4dwyemJCP8nrCQ.9xn-PoG_tIr7b8eElLer2lRE0RrDJRkmL7lHXVJfgko&dib_tag=se&keywords=Predict+and+Surveil&qid=1755219429&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/Predict-Surveil-Discretion-Future-Pol... According to the book, Palantir is one of the largest companies specializing in surveillance data management services for clients in the U.S. military, law enforcement and other corporations. Palantir does not own its data but rather provides an interface that runs on top of other data systems, including legacy systems, making it possible to link data points across separate systems. Palantir gathers its data primarily from "data brokerage firms," including LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters CLEAR, Acxiom, CoreLogic, Cambridge Analytica, Datalogix, Epsilon, Accurint. As Brayne observes, these data brokerage firms "collect and aggregate information from public records and private sources, e.g., drivers licenses, mortgages, social media, retail loyalty card purchases, professional credentials, charities’ donor lists, bankruptcies, payday lenders, warranty registrations, wireless access points at hotels and retailers, phone service providers, Google searches and maps geolocation, and other sources who sell your data to customers willing to pay for it. Yet it is difficult to fully understand the scope of the data brokerage industry: even the FTC cannot find out exactly where the data brokers get their information because brokerages cite trade secrecy as an excuse to not divulge their sources" (pp. 24-5, 41-2). Why is this a concern for people living in a democratic society with a supposedly strong legal system that protects individual freedoms? "Big data companies argue that their proprietary algorithms and data are trade secrets, and therefore they refuse to disclose their data, code and techniques with criminal defense attorneys or the public" (p. 135). This means that, "In many cases it is simply easier for law enforcement to purchase data from private firms than to rely on in-house data because there are fewer constitutional protections, reporting requirements and appellate checks on private sector surveillance and data collection, which enables police to circumvent privacy laws" (pp. 24-5).
- tgma 1y agoIf they can't explain what the product is, it is because they are effectively selling custom high margin consulting services anchored on a data pipeline product. This is not too dissimilar from Oracle, et al, that sell "solutions," "support," and "services" anchored on a not-so-special database product. But that's not sexy for recruitment and the VC investment math does not/did not like to hear the word consulting, so they lipstick the pig and sell depth-first search as some secret voodoo magic.
- uoaei 1y agoIt's "just" a "knowledge hypergraph" that combines natural resources, logistics, and social relations that can track the dynamics of basically any effort or enterprise. It's as simple and as complicated as that.
- vaylian 1y ago> But a number of former Palantir employees tell WIRED they believe the public still largely misunderstands what the company actually does and how its software works. Those employees are just in denial.
- verisimi 1y ago> “It's a really powerful tool,” says one former Palantir employee. “And when it's in the wrong hands, it can be really dangerous. And I think people should be really scared about it.” There are 'right hands' apparently.
- 6510 1y agoIt's hard to keep up with the convo here if you aren't paid by the post for polishing a turd. That said, it's quite an accomplishment how people in the US are conditioned to be fine with spending many many trillions to murder random people everywhere with no real goal or purpose.
- cess11 1y agoThey're the Computing-Tabulating-Recording, International Business Machines, Company of our age, and just as they did in the thirties and forties, Palantir shapes contemporary tyranny and genocide. While the predecessors arguably chased profit for its own sake, this is not the case with top Palantir leadership, who have very loudly declared their political ambitions and wallow openly in the nastiest of criminality. Now, that's not a good sales pitch, and neither would 'we will collapse complexity in your decision making while providing abstractions that add to plausible deniability, and hence make you more efficient at doing crimes while at the same time make it feel more boring to the people that actually do the things'. Hence the 'we fight for the Western civilisation against the barbarism of the world' branding, tuned to make NATO military personnel feel more or less at home. This is also why the Palantir employees don't have a solid idea about what they do, the same muddying about purpose through abstractions and cult like techniques are what keep them around.
- stevezsa8 1y agoI interviewed at Palantir London about 10 years ago. I am based in Europe and one of the younger interviewers let-slip that they will all be working during the local public holiday. lols. No thanks. Also, I grew up in a mixed ethnic environment. For the last few decades there has been a focus on trying to make society more inclusive. Such that my school exam papers would have questions like "Susan has 6 apples and gets 6 more. How many does she have" or "Rohit is travelling at 50mph ...." So a variety of names and genders etc to reflect the people who live here. Well, my Palantir interview information was about "networks of people that need to be tracked"... all Muhammads, Omars etc. These names were my school colleagues and friends, so this didn't sit well with me (just to be clear, I didn't want to work somewhere that seemed to be making software to track entire groups of people). They really should have sanitised their material and made it about helping Susan and Rohit track financial crime or some such. Instead I got vibes of that tv show Homeland.
- brnt 1y ago> They really should have sanitised their material No they shouldn't. I prefer seeing the beast as it is, not as how it would like to be seen.
- adrianN 1y agoYou do in fact see it as it would like to be seen. You’re just not part of the group that they are marketing to.
- Temporary_31337 1y agoI'm curious what names did you expect for an intelligence op in Afghanistan or Iran? Generally the police take care of things like financial crimes, so not sure why you expected this from a service provider to US three letter agencies
- karol 1y agoHe said he expected Susan;)
- robertkoss 1y agoI dont get it. Foundrys documentation is completely public, you can even sign up for the dev tier and try it out. It is not secretive at all. If there is one word to describe their products it would be ontology and literally no one has mentioned that. And even on Gotham there is countless footage etc. on Gaia, Dossier, Meta Constellation etc. They had to disclose this during the IDO, why are journalists just scratching the surface when discussing Palantir. It is obviously a tech company that has a clever business model, deploying their engineers and PMs into the board room of Fortune500s and solving their problems. Not trying to defend Palantir, but the journalistic work is just poor.
- knallfrosch 1y agoIt's basically SAP/Oracle. These match customer support, billing, warehouse inventory from data sources. You've got a rudimentary dashboard where you search for a customer and find his orders, address, phone number. Gotham appears to be the same for the police. You search for an address and know whether you've been called to this address yesterday, who lives there, whether they have weapons.. But ultimately, it depends on what data sources you connect. Yesterday you tracked criminals, today you can track people to deport and tomorrow you track Jews. It's all up the user of the software.
- robertkoss 1y agoits pretty obvious you have neither used foundry nor gotham.
- mrkramer 1y agoThey offer "spying" services for your big data. Essentially something like Facebook and Google but without selling ads, instead spotting patterns that seem interesting for whatever reason.
- rehman 1y agoPalantir is an evil, unethical organization that profits from war and surveillance, full stop. Its products operationalize mass data collection into targeting and policing workflows, turning human lives into "pipeline metrics" and normalizing permanent war as a business model. The revenue comes from conflict, and the lock-in comes from embedding its engineers into institutions that can't easily rip it out. That's not "neutral tooling"-it's an incentive engine for more harm.
- anentropic 1y agoI'm still none the wiser after reading this waffle