8 ms·

Palantir vs. the "Republik": US analytics firm takes magazine to court

247 points by cdrnsf 8mo ago

kakacik 8mo ago
Those pesky Swiss with their rights and freedom of press, must be really annoying for poor little thiel, while he just wants to sell surveillance to all sides. But seriously why should we (valid anywhere in Europe) buy such stuff from US, heck even take it for free. We can go straight to China with same logic, would be cheaper and have about the same amount of backdoors or remote kill switches. US admin publicly wished for subversion and dissolution of EU and making whole Europe a weaker continent, something folks like putin would greatly appreciate.
- lyu07282 8mo ago
  that sounds good in theory, but in practice almost every country in europe has already fully bought into Palantir tech so you are a bit late with that. Europol has used "Palantir Gotham" for a decade at this point. The idea of western nations national sovereignty is an illusion. Most european journalists wouldn't need to be told not to report badly about Palantir, that's the only thing that makes this story an outlier.
  - kakacik 8mo ago
    What you say can be true while what I say is valid in the same time. US gov is currently very hostile to whole Europe, way more than say to China and I don't see any option for a change in this in future. This is the approach US population prefers. If we here use such tech, maybe we need to come up with our own (just FFS don't buy israeli stuff if we want to have any higher moral ground), its not magic just data analytics. And to be frank, I am more than happy if we don't have such capabilities, we have much more serious topics to focus on like russia probably starting another war in Baltics in few years - thats a real mortal enemy, not some left wing dissidents (unless heavily manipulated by russians but then you don't need palantir's solutions).
    - 20after4 8mo ago
      > This is the approach US population prefers. Most of the population has very little leverage and is highly manipulated. It's the approach of a few who wield all of the power while the rest of us are either dismayed or distracted.
  - Alifatisk 8mo ago
    > Europol has used "Palantir Gotham" for a decade at this point. Europol did use a customized version of Gotham from 2016 up until 2022 where they decommissioned it and has replaced it in-house tools.
    - lyu07282 8mo ago
      What the fuck are you talking about, they are well known to not be transparent about their private contractor dealings. https://www.statewatch.org/analyses/2025/behind-closed-doors-europol-s-opaque-relations-with-tech-companies/ https://www.statewatch.org/analyses/2025/behind-closed-doors... https://www.heise.de/en/news/How-Europol-is-cozying-up-to-Microsoft-Palantir-Clearview-Co-11072807.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/How-Europol-is-cozying-up-to-Mi...
phoronixrly 8mo ago
Calling the company specialising in cyber espionage, data theft and generally human rights violations just an "analytics company"... Call it what it is cowards...
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
yatopifo 8mo ago
I think it's time for the EU to start denying US companies for security reasons.
- llm_nerd 8mo ago
  The US recently sanctioned a number of ICC judges and prosecutors, acting as a pathetic supplicant state for Israel[1]. https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions Any company operating worldwide that has a base in the US is legally required to cut all ties with these people. Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, and on and on. The US launched a trade nuclear bomb about some minor disagreement with the ICC, desperately trying to defend the war criminal (and just general criminal -- but don't worry, felon Trump is working to make sure he's pardoned for that, just like all the child molesters, drug dealers and sex traffickers that Trump is personally pardoning by the hundreds) Netanyahu. For this reason alone, every country not the United States or Israel needs to be full bore ahead on replacing every single American dependency. The fact that the US is trying to use this to punish people prosecuting literal war crimes is absolutely disgusting behaviour, and is utterly intolerable. Ignoring that the US government treats American tech companies as extensions of the government (as much or worse than China, it should be noted. Literally enlisted tech executives from a number of companies in the armed forces, as Chairman Trump demands ownership stakes of all of the firms and their business), and the US government is a friend of no one. And, it's happening. Everything the current pedo cabal is doing is the sort of short-term political win that is going to destroy the future of the US. Americans are still largely blissfully unaware and thinking this cabal of child rapists and self-dealing criminals (I believe Trump just gave himself $10B of taxpayer dollars...not even a murmur in the busted US) are just trolling the world, when really the US will be the biggest victim by far. Enjoy this brief moment of being the shining star, because the collapse is upon you. It turns out that the idiocracy has an expiry date. [1] - While it shouldn't need to be said, Israel != Jewishness. Further, it isn't an antisemitic slur to note how absolutely Israel has a stranglehold over the US, constantly seeing the latter punching itself in the face in the service of that rogue nation. Utterly bizarre behaviour. The US is Israel's El Salvador, with a clucking crew of simpletons desperately looking for the boss to give them some accolades.
crimsoneer 8mo ago
Probably worth also posting this for context: https://blog.palantir.com/korrektur-wie-das-online-magazin-die-republik-einen-regierungsbericht-zu-palantir-verdrehte-9a1b399ae255 https://blog.palantir.com/korrektur-wie-das-online-magazin-d...
- nohillside 8mo ago
  I especially like this part: "Auch in diesem Fall hätte Palantir gerne mit den Autoren des Berichts zusammengearbeitet, um unseren Ansatz zur Entwicklung und zum Einsatz von Technologien zum Schutz der Privatsphäre und zur Wahrung von Rechten detailliert darzulegen." (In this case too, Palantir would have welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with the report's authors to provide a detailed explanation of our approach to developing and deploying technologies that protect privacy and uphold rights.) It's not the function of the press to collaborate with the people/companies they write about.
mellosouls 8mo ago
Even if you buy Palantir’s claim of unfair framing, this is poor optics: the left defaults to “Palantir = big bad bully,” the right to “Europe = censorship,” and this fight manages to trigger both at once with Palantir looking very clumsy in the middle.
- mlinhares 8mo ago
  Oh come on there won't be anybody on the right calling this censorship, its one of their biggest donors.
  - mellosouls 8mo ago
    The point is the right won't be able to easily defend them, on this particular issue they've crossed into "enemy" territory.
    - renewiltord 8mo ago
      The realm of PR doesn’t require intellectual consistency. Besides “defending someone” online or in the media does very little to affect case outcomes.
NitpickLawyer 8mo ago
I sure hope Republik didn't write anything about Hulk Hogan ...
- InsideOutSanta 8mo ago
  This is happening in Switzerland, Hulk Hogan would not have been able to destroy a relatively large media outlet with a single lawsuit there. The main outcome from this is that the Republik will have to print a correction if Palantir wins. I do hope the Republik gains a few subscribers from this, because they absolutely rule.
- kotaKat 8mo ago
  I’d be here for them to re-expose the blood drinking and the curious murderous circumstances of a potential ex-lover myself.
kmeisthax 8mo ago
Shame on Heise for this GDPR-noncompliant trash in their cookie pop-up: > We offer you the option of rejecting individual data processing. If you have made a selection for all processing purposes, you can save it. Please note that consent to personalised advertising is always required for use without a Pur subscription. Naah, no, you don't get to gate rejecting consent behind a subscription. Not even if that's your economic reality. The GDPR entitles people in Europe to opt out of surveillance capitalism, and if you can't make money in that environment, you deserve to go bankrupt. Gimme dat shit for free.
- throwawayqqq11 8mo ago
  You do you think pay-or-ok is not compliant? Ive not heard of a ruling against it.
  - tremon 8mo ago
    https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ > Consent is presumed not to be freely given [..] if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance. https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-explained-why-more-and-more-websites-make-you-pay-your-privacy https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-explained-why-more-and-more-w... > the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is working on a binding opinion on 'Pay or Consent', which will determine whether Europeans continue to have a realistic option to protect their privacy online. If the approach is legitimised for Meta, companies across all industries could follow suit - which would mark the end of genuine consent to the use of European's data.
mitchbob 8mo ago
https://archive.ph/xobOu https://archive.ph/xobOu
rcbdev 8mo ago
If Palantir is an "analytics firm", I am a helicopter.
- atmosx 8mo ago
  lol, you and I mate…
SilverElfin 8mo ago
It’s the same Trumpian playbook of attacking publications and using capital to censor, bully, and extract settlements. These companies are evil. But they are evil particularly because a class of ultra wealthy (the Epstein class) are allowed to amass wealth and power.
- brandensilva 8mo ago
  The deep state is their former name but I like your reference or the Epstein class which is far better at describing how both sides of the political aisle are compromised by the rich and powerful who know no laws or punishment for crimes any normal person would be subjected too.
  - Der_Einzige 8mo ago
    How many leftists are in the Epstein files again? Chomsky (“manufacturing consent is an icky book in retrospect…), and then the next most left wing figure is… bill clinton? Or did I miss some folks? It’s not the Bernie, AOC, Ilhan Omar class who’s in the Epstein files. Hell even Elizabeth Warren isn’t in them! It’s really just one side. The left always will eat its own but in the context of disliking pedophiles they are spotless (in America, Europe is a whole different beast with Foucault et al and his ilk protesting French age of consent laws - but that was far before epsteins time)
- derelicta 8mo ago
  The Epstein class is the capitalist class. It's important to name them correctly. Otherwise I fully agree.
poontangbot 8mo ago
[flagged]
konaraddi 8mo ago
The reporting in question is a few articles on palantir here: https://www.republik.ch/suche?q=Palantir https://www.republik.ch/suche?q=Palantir Unusually difficult to find the site, maybe because it’s a small Swiss magazine written in German and I’m in the US doing a search on google. Interestingly, Palantir has a website called Republic that beats Republik in SEO for “Republik”.
derelicta 8mo ago
Always a pleasure to see Republik being featured in the press ahah, even if its too social-democratic to my taste. I know they've been struggling for some time, so hopefully the Imperial Juggernaut that is Palantir won't manage to bleed them too severly.

247 points by cdrnsf 8mo ago

Those pesky Swiss with their rights and freedom of press, must be really annoying for poor little thiel, while he just wants to sell surveillance to all sides. But seriously why should we (valid anywhere in Europe) buy such stuff from US, heck even take it for free. We can go straight to China with same logic, would be cheaper and have about the same amount of backdoors or remote kill switches. US admin publicly wished for subversion and dissolution of EU and making whole Europe a weaker continent, something folks like putin would greatly appreciate.

lyu07282 8mo ago
that sounds good in theory, but in practice almost every country in europe has already fully bought into Palantir tech so you are a bit late with that. Europol has used "Palantir Gotham" for a decade at this point. The idea of western nations national sovereignty is an illusion. Most european journalists wouldn't need to be told not to report badly about Palantir, that's the only thing that makes this story an outlier.
- kakacik 8mo ago
  What you say can be true while what I say is valid in the same time. US gov is currently very hostile to whole Europe, way more than say to China and I don't see any option for a change in this in future. This is the approach US population prefers. If we here use such tech, maybe we need to come up with our own (just FFS don't buy israeli stuff if we want to have any higher moral ground), its not magic just data analytics. And to be frank, I am more than happy if we don't have such capabilities, we have much more serious topics to focus on like russia probably starting another war in Baltics in few years - thats a real mortal enemy, not some left wing dissidents (unless heavily manipulated by russians but then you don't need palantir's solutions).
  - 20after4 8mo ago
    > This is the approach US population prefers. Most of the population has very little leverage and is highly manipulated. It's the approach of a few who wield all of the power while the rest of us are either dismayed or distracted.
- Alifatisk 8mo ago
  > Europol has used "Palantir Gotham" for a decade at this point. Europol did use a customized version of Gotham from 2016 up until 2022 where they decommissioned it and has replaced it in-house tools.
  - lyu07282 8mo ago
    What the fuck are you talking about, they are well known to not be transparent about their private contractor dealings. https://www.statewatch.org/analyses/2025/behind-closed-doors-europol-s-opaque-relations-with-tech-companies/ https://www.statewatch.org/analyses/2025/behind-closed-doors... https://www.heise.de/en/news/How-Europol-is-cozying-up-to-Microsoft-Palantir-Clearview-Co-11072807.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/How-Europol-is-cozying-up-to-Mi...

phoronixrly 8mo ago

Calling the company specialising in cyber espionage, data theft and generally human rights violations just an "analytics company"... Call it what it is cowards...

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

yatopifo 8mo ago

I think it's time for the EU to start denying US companies for security reasons.

llm_nerd 8mo ago
The US recently sanctioned a number of ICC judges and prosecutors, acting as a pathetic supplicant state for Israel[1]. https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions https://www.state.gov/icc-sanctions Any company operating worldwide that has a base in the US is legally required to cut all ties with these people. Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Google, Microsoft, and on and on. The US launched a trade nuclear bomb about some minor disagreement with the ICC, desperately trying to defend the war criminal (and just general criminal -- but don't worry, felon Trump is working to make sure he's pardoned for that, just like all the child molesters, drug dealers and sex traffickers that Trump is personally pardoning by the hundreds) Netanyahu. For this reason alone, every country not the United States or Israel needs to be full bore ahead on replacing every single American dependency. The fact that the US is trying to use this to punish people prosecuting literal war crimes is absolutely disgusting behaviour, and is utterly intolerable. Ignoring that the US government treats American tech companies as extensions of the government (as much or worse than China, it should be noted. Literally enlisted tech executives from a number of companies in the armed forces, as Chairman Trump demands ownership stakes of all of the firms and their business), and the US government is a friend of no one. And, it's happening. Everything the current pedo cabal is doing is the sort of short-term political win that is going to destroy the future of the US. Americans are still largely blissfully unaware and thinking this cabal of child rapists and self-dealing criminals (I believe Trump just gave himself $10B of taxpayer dollars...not even a murmur in the busted US) are just trolling the world, when really the US will be the biggest victim by far. Enjoy this brief moment of being the shining star, because the collapse is upon you. It turns out that the idiocracy has an expiry date. [1] - While it shouldn't need to be said, Israel != Jewishness. Further, it isn't an antisemitic slur to note how absolutely Israel has a stranglehold over the US, constantly seeing the latter punching itself in the face in the service of that rogue nation. Utterly bizarre behaviour. The US is Israel's El Salvador, with a clucking crew of simpletons desperately looking for the boss to give them some accolades.

crimsoneer 8mo ago

Probably worth also posting this for context: https://blog.palantir.com/korrektur-wie-das-online-magazin-die-republik-einen-regierungsbericht-zu-palantir-verdrehte-9a1b399ae255 https://blog.palantir.com/korrektur-wie-das-online-magazin-d...

nohillside 8mo ago
I especially like this part: "Auch in diesem Fall hätte Palantir gerne mit den Autoren des Berichts zusammengearbeitet, um unseren Ansatz zur Entwicklung und zum Einsatz von Technologien zum Schutz der Privatsphäre und zur Wahrung von Rechten detailliert darzulegen." (In this case too, Palantir would have welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with the report's authors to provide a detailed explanation of our approach to developing and deploying technologies that protect privacy and uphold rights.) It's not the function of the press to collaborate with the people/companies they write about.

mellosouls 8mo ago

Even if you buy Palantir’s claim of unfair framing, this is poor optics: the left defaults to “Palantir = big bad bully,” the right to “Europe = censorship,” and this fight manages to trigger both at once with Palantir looking very clumsy in the middle.

mlinhares 8mo ago
Oh come on there won't be anybody on the right calling this censorship, its one of their biggest donors.
- mellosouls 8mo ago
  The point is the right won't be able to easily defend them, on this particular issue they've crossed into "enemy" territory.
  - renewiltord 8mo ago
    The realm of PR doesn’t require intellectual consistency. Besides “defending someone” online or in the media does very little to affect case outcomes.

NitpickLawyer 8mo ago

I sure hope Republik didn't write anything about Hulk Hogan ...

InsideOutSanta 8mo ago
This is happening in Switzerland, Hulk Hogan would not have been able to destroy a relatively large media outlet with a single lawsuit there. The main outcome from this is that the Republik will have to print a correction if Palantir wins. I do hope the Republik gains a few subscribers from this, because they absolutely rule.
kotaKat 8mo ago
I’d be here for them to re-expose the blood drinking and the curious murderous circumstances of a potential ex-lover myself.

kmeisthax 8mo ago

Shame on Heise for this GDPR-noncompliant trash in their cookie pop-up: > We offer you the option of rejecting individual data processing. If you have made a selection for all processing purposes, you can save it. Please note that consent to personalised advertising is always required for use without a Pur subscription. Naah, no, you don't get to gate rejecting consent behind a subscription. Not even if that's your economic reality. The GDPR entitles people in Europe to opt out of surveillance capitalism, and if you can't make money in that environment, you deserve to go bankrupt. Gimme dat shit for free.

throwawayqqq11 8mo ago
You do you think pay-or-ok is not compliant? Ive not heard of a ruling against it.
- tremon 8mo ago
  https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ > Consent is presumed not to be freely given [..] if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance. https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-explained-why-more-and-more-websites-make-you-pay-your-privacy https://noyb.eu/en/pay-or-okay-explained-why-more-and-more-w... > the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is working on a binding opinion on 'Pay or Consent', which will determine whether Europeans continue to have a realistic option to protect their privacy online. If the approach is legitimised for Meta, companies across all industries could follow suit - which would mark the end of genuine consent to the use of European's data.

mitchbob 8mo ago

https://archive.ph/xobOu https://archive.ph/xobOu

rcbdev 8mo ago

If Palantir is an "analytics firm", I am a helicopter.

atmosx 8mo ago
lol, you and I mate…

SilverElfin 8mo ago

It’s the same Trumpian playbook of attacking publications and using capital to censor, bully, and extract settlements. These companies are evil. But they are evil particularly because a class of ultra wealthy (the Epstein class) are allowed to amass wealth and power.

brandensilva 8mo ago
The deep state is their former name but I like your reference or the Epstein class which is far better at describing how both sides of the political aisle are compromised by the rich and powerful who know no laws or punishment for crimes any normal person would be subjected too.
- Der_Einzige 8mo ago
  How many leftists are in the Epstein files again? Chomsky (“manufacturing consent is an icky book in retrospect…), and then the next most left wing figure is… bill clinton? Or did I miss some folks? It’s not the Bernie, AOC, Ilhan Omar class who’s in the Epstein files. Hell even Elizabeth Warren isn’t in them! It’s really just one side. The left always will eat its own but in the context of disliking pedophiles they are spotless (in America, Europe is a whole different beast with Foucault et al and his ilk protesting French age of consent laws - but that was far before epsteins time)
derelicta 8mo ago
The Epstein class is the capitalist class. It's important to name them correctly. Otherwise I fully agree.

poontangbot 8mo ago

[flagged]

konaraddi 8mo ago

The reporting in question is a few articles on palantir here: https://www.republik.ch/suche?q=Palantir https://www.republik.ch/suche?q=Palantir Unusually difficult to find the site, maybe because it’s a small Swiss magazine written in German and I’m in the US doing a search on google. Interestingly, Palantir has a website called Republic that beats Republik in SEO for “Republik”.

derelicta 8mo ago

Always a pleasure to see Republik being featured in the press ahah, even if its too social-democratic to my taste. I know they've been struggling for some time, so hopefully the Imperial Juggernaut that is Palantir won't manage to bleed them too severly.