6 ms·

Say No to Palantir in Europe

607 points by Betelbuddy 7mo ago

gzread 7mo ago
[flagged]
- SilverElfin 7mo ago
  They can be the precursor to other forms of action. It helps the activists find each other to get started, even if the pressure it generates isn’t enough to convince politicians.
- pavlov 7mo ago
  Awareness can ultimately change things. Suffragettes were ridiculed for collecting petitions in support of women’s right to vote. Who cares about papers filled with women’s signatures? How could that change something as fundamental as who gets to vote in a democracy? The power of Big Tech money in today’s Western democracies is a similar tenet that’s just taken for granted. How could it ever change? Until it does, and then it looks obvious it had to.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - gzread 7mo ago
    Suffragettes weren't listened to by the government until they started conducting bombing and arson attacks.
- victorbjorklund 7mo ago
  Public opinion can def have effect if you live in a democracy. Politicians rather pay more for something else if they think it will help them / avoid hurt them. Might not work in America though.
  - FpUser 7mo ago
    >"Public opinion can def have effect if you live in a democracy." Having ability to choose between 2 sides of the same ass does not look like much of democracy. Never mind the money the candidate has to have and where this money comes from. And what happens to this democracy when the bills come due and the interest on government borrowing "on behalf" can no longer be paid.
    - bdangubic 7mo ago
      when the bills come due you just print more money :)
      - FpUser 7mo ago
        Nope. Government borrows money from investors. including big ones. at some points the investors might come back with a different proposal. peasants can potentially do something about it as well.
        bdangubic 7mo ago
        google “quantitative easing (QE)”
        FpUser 7mo ago
        That is total BS strategy, especially now
        gzread 7mo ago
        That already happened this week. Due to the Iran invasion, the bond market froze up.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    The probability of a proposed measure passing in America depends linearly on how much of the population supports it. If 0% of the population supports it, it has a 30% chance of passing. If 100% of the population supports it, it has a 30% chance of passing.
- LightBug1 7mo ago
  They help raise awareness but, true, only work in conjunction with other actions. Fortunately, I am aware of some of those other actions. E.g. pro bono legals taking the fight on, etc.
- scorpionfeet 7mo ago
  Because some people are natural followers and won’t do anything unless there is a nice safe herd doing it. In this case we actually need a herd to push back against authoritarianism. And if people don’t feel empowered until they feel safe then enough protestors must stand up to create that critical mass. It’s a painful irony: people won’t mobilize because no one has mobilized. What makes it worse is the mocking of the protestors for having the courage to go first.
- rireads 7mo ago
  Certainly, mr. Palantir. I shall stop voicing my opinion immediately.
linhns 7mo ago
Europe can regulate anything out. Palantir should be no different.
- lpcvoid 7mo ago
  And I am very happy about that superpower. Regulation is a very good thing, specially when wielded against US big tech.
- tinco 7mo ago
  No we can't. In the early 2000s we desperately tried to get our governments to be less dependent on Microsoft and we completely failed. Europe is not a federation like the US, worse many of the countries in Europe themselves are governed much like federations. We are easy prey for big American corporations. It's easy for Palantir to sell their product and then a thousand little government organizations will claim there simply is no alternative at the same quality level.
  - tossandthrow 7mo ago
    Now, the EU can, using the anti coercion instrument.
  - noisy_boy 7mo ago
    > In the early 2000s we desperately tried to get our governments to be less dependent on Microsoft and we completely failed You didn't have the great unifying dislike of the orange man as a motivating factor then. Now you do and I would wager there is significant public support behind getting away from reliance on the US.
0x3f 7mo ago
> A powerful company enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran. Ah yes, European issues
- kylecazar 7mo ago
  Things Palantir does in other countries is fine cause for not wanting it deployed in your own
  - 0x3f 7mo ago
    Perhaps, but one would think those aren't the prime issues meriting first mention. I went in hoping for details of what Palantir is doing wrong _in Europe_, but all I got was some rallying the base cliches.
    - kakacik 7mo ago
      We prefer seeing all humans as equal, and not setting their value based on their passports like US does. Also, shit done elsewhere will be repeated in all other places, no reason to doubt that.
  - 9864247888754 7mo ago
    [flagged]
- pavlov 7mo ago
  Not yet because they’re not operating in Europe yet. There are enough far-right (and generally Putin-aligned, like Hungary) forces on the continent that they’d love to feed.
  - 0x3f 7mo ago
    > Not yet because they’re not operating in Europe yet. They're definitely operating in Europe. They literally have 15 offices scattered around.
- 7mo ago
mcosta 7mo ago
Europe needs its own Palatir
mrlonglong 7mo ago
The UK has decided to terminate Palantir contracts when they become due for renewal. Not before time.
- hkt 7mo ago
  Not before handing over an enormous cache of NHS patient data to them during the pandemic. If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute.
  - mrlonglong 7mo ago
    Yes whoever decided to let them do this has a lot of explaining to do. This data should never have left the UK.
    - GuestFAUniverse 7mo ago
      Grab them by the balls and make sure they are never able to make a political decision with such an impact again.
  - Silhouette 7mo ago
    If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute. Does anyone have a verifiable source for that? It would be extremely controversial if true and even among the big civil liberties and privacy advocacy groups in the UK I have never seen anyone make that claim. The defence to using Palantir by British government departments and public services has typically been that Palantir only provides the technology and the data itself is still held and processed in the UK under the native organisation's control. Even this is still controversial because of issues like the CLOUD Act and the general reputation of Palantir. But that is a long way from allowing the mass export of sensitive personal data to a US firm without the data subjects' knowledge or consent. That looks just plain illegal under our existing data protection legislation. Green lighting it - even in the panic phase during COVID - would probably be controversial enough to end a few political careers at least. It might even leave enough of a cloud over the party in government at the time to affect a future election.
deaux 7mo ago
Sure, Europe should absolutely be saying no to Palantir. However > A powerful company enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran So does Google, so does Meta, so does Oracle. What do you think all that Palantir software runs on in the clouds? On Palantir's own huge datacenters? They don'thave those. The huge bulk of it runs on it on clouds provided my Microsoft, Amazon, Google. Meta in particular causes such ridiculously larger amounts of societal damage that focusing so much energy on Palantir specifically is a dead giveaway it's not really about harm caused, it's about optics. Because they themselves likely use WhatsApp and Instagram, yet they don't knowingly use Palantir products. If you're going to single out one US tech company as "we need to stop cooperating with them", I don't see how it can be any other than Meta. It's like telling someone morbidly obese to stop eating a single cookie per day rather than the 5 cheese pizzas they're also having. Maybe the cookie is slightly worse per gram, but it's also completely ineffective to focus on.
- Mordisquitos 7mo ago
  Indeed. It is very disappointing that they chose that as the opening paragraph of their "Why" section, without even making the attempt to relate those points as to why Palantir in Europe would be bad for European citizens. As someone who strongly supports European digital sovereignty and eliminating dependency on the US, I'm frankly very tired of so damn much of the activist discourse around these issues revolving around US-centred topics. Yes, sure, Gaza is not the US, and the US-Israel war with Iran is bad for Europe, but those are damn well not the reasons we should say no to Palantir. If the Israel-Gaza conflict hadn't reignited a couple of years ago and thus Gaza wasn't on everybody's minds, and if the Iran attacks hadn't (yet) happened, should we then have nothing to say as to why we don't want Palantir than it's provision of services for internal US immigration policies? Maybe I should be grateful they haven't also listed Palantir being involved in period-tracking of American women in the wake of the reversal of Roe-vs-Wade. Jesus Christ, won't the most vocal pro-European activists please stop making everything about US talking points, and start being able to take a stance from basic principles and our own interests?
  - scorpionfeet 7mo ago
__natty__ 7mo ago
I wonder what the alternative for Europe might be? A new project to launch, or is there an existing solution? Siren? Argon? In any case, it could be a great opportunity for Europe to create new jobs whilst increasing its sovereignty.
- Xelbair 7mo ago
  Why? why would we need to fund and make Europen Alternative to Surveilance (tm) when we could just you know - not have it at all?
- wolvoleo 7mo ago
  Even if it's nothing that would be a big win.
- Bombthecat 7mo ago
  d.AP, itemis, datawalk, helsing. There are a few alternatives, depending what you want.
  - aitchnyu 7mo ago
    Did Helsing get its name from the fictional vampire hunter family?
    - rvz 7mo ago
      All of them are just as bad a Palantir.
      - Bombthecat 7mo ago
        No that's not true, some try to do it by the book ( ai act, gdpr, and follow German law etc) but they won't have any chance on the market, because those who ignore any law will provide more information / control etc for police, state etc etc
- tsimionescu 7mo ago
  Palantir's technology, as its own name suggests, is inherently dangerous, regardless of who controls it. The right alternative is to simply not build capabilities similar to Palantir in the EU - ideally, to legally forbid building them at all. This type of aggregated data flow simply gives too much control to whoever has access to it, and thus greatly harms democracy.
lucasay 7mo ago
Petitions don’t do much on their own, but they’re often how pressure starts. And ‘not European issues’ feels off when these companies operate globally anyway.
- LightBug1 7mo ago
  Pressure is building, thankfully. It's not just petitions now, but legal groups getting involved, etc. At least in the UK. Hopefully it spreads like wildfire around Europe. The orange Oompa Loompa is likely helping kindle those flames nicely.
bicx 7mo ago
No to Palantir in Europe
- layer8 7mo ago
  So you used voice dictation?
helf 7mo ago
I love how Palantir is comically evil. Their logo being the Palantir from LoTR (duh) and all. It's wild to me lol. They don't even try to pretend anymore.
redanddead 7mo ago
say no to palantir in america too they're giving startups an awful name in the eyes of the people, supposedly by the guy teaching others how to do startups, good grief
- y1n0 7mo ago
  What’s the definition of startup these days? Palantir is 23 years old with 4000+ employees. It’s publicly traded. What makes it a startup?
chopete3 7mo ago
>> Palantir enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran. Out of technical curiosity,where do we find more on how Palatir is helping technically?. Types of ML jobs they are running? Open source or AI models they are using.
- inaros 7mo ago
  "Palantir’s Architecture: Analyzing the Ethics of Surveillance AI" - https://erikabarker.ai/data-analysis/the-palantir-paradox-democracys-most-dangerous-servant/ https://erikabarker.ai/data-analysis/the-palantir-paradox-de... "All the Ways Palantir is Assisting Trump’s Abusive Removal Campaign" - https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/palantir-deportation-roundup https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/palantir-deport... "‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid" - https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-find-neighborhoods-to-raid/ https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-f... "The seer and the seen: Surveying Palantir’s surveillance platform" - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2022.2100851#abstract https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2022.2... "ICE Using Palantir Tool That Feeds On Medicaid Data" - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/report-ice-using-palantir-tool-feeds-medicaid-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/report-ice-using-palan... "How one company – Palantir – is mapping the nation’s data" - https://theconversation.com/when-the-government-can-see-everything-how-one-company-palantir-is-mapping-the-nations-data-263178 https://theconversation.com/when-the-government-can-see-ever... "AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying" - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam...
- nerfbatplz 7mo ago
  Palantir is part of the IDF's kill chain. In Gaza that means supporting the automated targeting systems that choose targets with little to no human oversight, and then the automated tracking systems that follow targets until they are at home with their families so that the entire family can be killed at once. https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticias/palantir-allegedly-enables-israels-ai-targeting-amid-israels-war-in-gaza-raising-concerns-over-war-crimes/ https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia... https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ >Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside. >“Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” A. said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”
epolanski 7mo ago
Instantly signed up. I'm already moving most of my clients out of any US-based offering. Azure and Jira are sticky, but they'll be out sooner or later.
- KellyCriterion 7mo ago
  Ex-Colleagues are launching a startup right now: No US-Services from the beginning on, only OpenSource and this new EU-Office thingy. I think more companies will join the train? Esp new & smaller ones, for sure there is no option for bigCorp like ASML to be free of US-cloud, but maybe its gaining traction.
  - polyamid23 7mo ago
    What new EU-Office thingy?
    - pimeys 7mo ago
      https://office.eu/ https://office.eu/
    - grsmvg 7mo ago
      Reading this interview and the comments doesn't really spark a lot of confidence in the product (in Dutch): https://tweakers.net/reviews/14562/nextcloud-met-een-strik-erom-hoe-uniek-is-microsoft-365-concurrent-office-eu.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/14562/nextcloud-met-een-strik-e... I paints the picture of it being mostly a hyped marketing wrapper around Nextcloud that hasn't even launched yet.
  - gip 7mo ago
    Surprised by this take. Building a startup is already insanely hard. So I wouldn’t like to add more challenge by spending time integrating with non-US services if they are not top just because of my political views. I feel a better answer is for Europe to build real, competitive alternatives to US services.
    - 7mo ago
lokimedes 7mo ago
Even Alex Karp openly recommends European countries to roll their own alternatives. If anyone in Europe insists on Palantir it’s by their own volition. The hard work is integration and data workflows, that is hard work regardless of the chosen “exploitation interface”.
delichon 7mo ago
Isn't this a bit like foregoing the use of gunpowder because it isn't chivalrous? If your enemies don't agree it doesn't end well.
- airstrike 7mo ago
  Not at all. It's against using Palantir specifically, not against the idea of something like Palantir "but European". It's literally at the very top of the article: - Stop signing new contracts with Palantir. - Review and phase out existing contracts with the company. - Invest in transparent, publicly accountable European alternatives. And Palantir isn't like gunpowder, so I'm not even sure the analogy had any legs to begin with
  - raincole 7mo ago
    Half of the comments in this thread are expressing how they're very against the idea of something like Palantir "but European". It seems like some Europeans really believe that handicapping themselves is a good idea.
- drums8787 7mo ago
  No. The means can spoil the end.
- gnerd00 7mo ago
  perhaps, but civil law is a negotiated contract including rights of all involved. If a tech conglomerate invents new applications, are they now exempt from civil law? The era of the Nation State began when courts did have real means to enforce against powerful rogues. The suggestion that simply applying a new weaponized technology overrides the legal context is regressive.
- dfxm12 7mo ago
  Can you explain the comparison because on its face and especially given the context in the link, I don't see the connection.
- badlibrarian 7mo ago
gradus_ad 7mo ago
Say No to Subsidizing European Defense
renewiltord 7mo ago
Oh boy, I'm looking forward to the brand new EU program to allocate one million dollars to eligible startups that can develop a weapons and targeting platform so long as all forms are filed well and a registered notary has read out the bill to all participants and each participant has read out the application so that informed consent is received.
BurningFrog 7mo ago
[dead]
niekiepriekie 7mo ago
But it’s already widespread in Europe, or at least in the Netherlands. Amsterdam Airport uses it, as do the Dutch police and the Dutch army. So shouldn’t it be: kick out Palantir?
- thomasgeelens 7mo ago
  Oh man I'm in NL, didn't know that, that's. .. dark.
  - inaros 7mo ago
    "Dutch police also use controversial AI intelligence software by American Palantir" - https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/22/dutch-police-also-use-controversial-ai-intelligence-software-american-palantir https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/22/dutch-police-also-use-controve... "Palantir is well on its way to conquering Europe" - https://www.euractiv.com/news/palantir-is-well-on-its-way-to-conquering-europe/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/palantir-is-well-on-its-way-to...
- hashstring 7mo ago
  Amsterdam Airport? Source?
  - niekiepriekie 7mo ago
    Well, i don’t have a source. Its very hush hush, as even the part that the police is using it has been leaked by a redacted document. It’s crazy. https://www.privacynieuws.nl/binnenlands-nieuws/politie-en-justitie/nederlandse-politie-gebruikt-omstreden-software-van-palantir.html https://www.privacynieuws.nl/binnenlands-nieuws/politie-en-j...
    - hashstring 7mo ago
      Hm, ok, but you suspect that Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol Group I suppose) is using it?
- illiac786 7mo ago
karl11 7mo ago
I don't think there has ever been a company so poorly understood (willfully or otherwise) as Palantir. They make a software platform, it does not come with any data, does not come connected to any datasources, etc. You can literally sign up right now for a trial and see this for yourself. It looks the same if you were to purchase a license. This headline might as well say 'Say No to PostgreSQL' or 'Say No to Excel' or 'Say No to Salesforce', etc. Wild.
- surgical_fire 7mo ago
  Is their code open? Can you somehow attest that the data it ingests is fully under control of the client that uses the platform? The comparison to PostgreSQL in particular is very poor in that regard.
  - simianwords 7mo ago
    You can self host it on premises. I think the comparison is fair for most of the products offered by Palantir.
- beepbooptheory 7mo ago
  Ok but then why? Or, what's your point here? Like what would explain the behavior you are noting if it really is that absurd and seemingly arbitrary? Is the implication that they just have really bad PR?
- tasuki 7mo ago
  > This headline might as well say 'Say No to PostgreSQL' or 'Say No to Excel' or 'Say No to Salesforce', etc. Wild. Wat? These are wildly different things: > Say No to PostgreSQL Sure, if you self-host it, this would be a stupid thing to say. > Say No to Excel A little worse: it's proprietary and who knows what it does and where it sends your data. > Say No to Salesforce Way worse: they host the data, and who knows what they do with it.
  - simianwords 7mo ago
    A lot of words but you could have simply searched to know that Palantir offers self hosting.
nicklo 7mo ago
or say yes? decel mentality like this is why europe is falling behind. some poor startup will try to backfill these contracts to be the new palantir of europe only to be cut at the knees by regulation and more outcry think piece boycotts like this. rinse and repeat until the us and china become the only relevant acceleration hubs on earth during the singularity
grokcodec 7mo ago
"powerful company enables genocide in Gaza" first sentence flags this as a complete load of malarcky
chme 7mo ago
I'm just wondering why this isn't a European Citizen Initiative (ECI)... I could not find any information on what kind of influence a online-petition on wemove.eu would have...
simianwords 7mo ago
How do we differentiate between genuine empathy and love for the world and simple virtue signalling? If USA weren't the one safeguarding (contentious but please read on) the world and its modern interests then we would end up with something much worse. If you only focus locally, it is quite easy to dismiss any form of killing, any form of surveillance and any form of inconvenience. This is "Defund the Police" meme all over again. I gain social points by showing my disgust against the killings and murder done by the west. I gain nothing by promoting what they safeguard and promote that is necessary for the world to function. Such dynamics will lead to self ownage at the long run but social status points for oneself in the short term.
- kelipso 7mo ago
  > we would end up with something much worse. Whenever I see this, I recognize it as obvious scaremongering.
  - simianwords 7mo ago
    When I saw "defund the policy" I recognised it as virtue signalling.
    - bdangubic 7mo ago
      Same people that scoff at “Defund the Police” rejoice “Defund the Dept of Education” (and vice versa)
      - simianwords 7mo ago
        Question: do you agree police must be defunded?
        bdangubic 7mo ago
        I agree that in both cases there is an issue that needs to be solved (see NYPD budget as example) so don’t take “defund” at face value but more like “radical changes are needed”
gobdovan 7mo ago
'Say "Yes" to Palantir not coming to Europe' - would have been the wording if the vote were organized by Romanian politicians. (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_presidential_impeachment_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_presidential_imp...)
avazhi 7mo ago
[flagged]
- HDBaseT 7mo ago
  If you're goal is to make everyone's life worse, then maybe good is the right word but for most people, Palantir does evil work.
  - avazhi 7mo ago
    Palantir hasn’t made my life worse, though.
    - HDBaseT 7mo ago
      These things are hard to quantify. Palantir hasn't come into your house and stabbed you (yet) but the deep state surveillance network they enable is concerning and honestly undermines just about everything, voting, politics, equality, etc.
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      - avazhi 7mo ago
        > Palantir hasn't come into your house and stabbed you (yet) but the deep state surveillance network they enable is concerning and honestly undermines just about everything, voting, politics, equality, etc. Assuming I value democracy as much as you clearly assume I do (which I do not), wtf are you even talking about, man?
- danny_codes 7mo ago
  Their CEO is a loon for one thing. But also the concept of spying is generally unsavory. Nobody wants to be tracked. Palantir has proven that they have no ethical framework for who they work with. Essentially they fill a mercenary role in modern society. Nobody really trusts mercenaries, for obvious reasons.
periodjet 7mo ago
> Our political system has served the elite and maximised profit for too long, and now we’re seeing devastating effects on our environment, our economy, our democracy, and our everyday lives. That’s because the systems that are currently in place are built to benefit the rich and powerful. We want a better Europe. One that takes climate action seriously, puts well-being first, welcomes those seeking refuge with open arms, listens to the needs of people, and protects nature. These people are telling themselves (and others) stories of their own creation, disconnected from any empirical testing of the reality around them. Disturbing to witness, particularly how many people read something like this and without a shred of critical thought say “damn, that sounds good! Sign me up!”
- thrance 7mo ago
  What exactly do you disagree with here? The statement is not very substantive and a bit simplistic, but it's not exactly wrong either. Inequalities are rising, and the system is biased in favor of the owning class. The environment is more often than not forgotten about in lawmaking, which will lead to dire consequences down the line.
- lovelearning 7mo ago
  To me, the assumptions in your comment about them and their views seem much more like stories of your own creation, likely without any empirical testing of the reality around you.
michele_f 7mo ago
Palantir is currently used by Unicredit.

607 points by Betelbuddy 7mo ago

gzread 7mo ago

[flagged]

SilverElfin 7mo ago
They can be the precursor to other forms of action. It helps the activists find each other to get started, even if the pressure it generates isn’t enough to convince politicians.
pavlov 7mo ago
Awareness can ultimately change things. Suffragettes were ridiculed for collecting petitions in support of women’s right to vote. Who cares about papers filled with women’s signatures? How could that change something as fundamental as who gets to vote in a democracy? The power of Big Tech money in today’s Western democracies is a similar tenet that’s just taken for granted. How could it ever change? Until it does, and then it looks obvious it had to.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- gzread 7mo ago
  Suffragettes weren't listened to by the government until they started conducting bombing and arson attacks.
victorbjorklund 7mo ago
Public opinion can def have effect if you live in a democracy. Politicians rather pay more for something else if they think it will help them / avoid hurt them. Might not work in America though.
- FpUser 7mo ago
  >"Public opinion can def have effect if you live in a democracy." Having ability to choose between 2 sides of the same ass does not look like much of democracy. Never mind the money the candidate has to have and where this money comes from. And what happens to this democracy when the bills come due and the interest on government borrowing "on behalf" can no longer be paid.
  - bdangubic 7mo ago
    when the bills come due you just print more money :)
    - FpUser 7mo ago
      Nope. Government borrows money from investors. including big ones. at some points the investors might come back with a different proposal. peasants can potentially do something about it as well.
      - bdangubic 7mo ago
        google “quantitative easing (QE)”
        FpUser 7mo ago
        That is total BS strategy, especially now
      - gzread 7mo ago
        That already happened this week. Due to the Iran invasion, the bond market froze up.
- gzread 7mo ago
  The probability of a proposed measure passing in America depends linearly on how much of the population supports it. If 0% of the population supports it, it has a 30% chance of passing. If 100% of the population supports it, it has a 30% chance of passing.
LightBug1 7mo ago
They help raise awareness but, true, only work in conjunction with other actions. Fortunately, I am aware of some of those other actions. E.g. pro bono legals taking the fight on, etc.
scorpionfeet 7mo ago
Because some people are natural followers and won’t do anything unless there is a nice safe herd doing it. In this case we actually need a herd to push back against authoritarianism. And if people don’t feel empowered until they feel safe then enough protestors must stand up to create that critical mass. It’s a painful irony: people won’t mobilize because no one has mobilized. What makes it worse is the mocking of the protestors for having the courage to go first.
rireads 7mo ago
Certainly, mr. Palantir. I shall stop voicing my opinion immediately.

linhns 7mo ago

Europe can regulate anything out. Palantir should be no different.

lpcvoid 7mo ago
And I am very happy about that superpower. Regulation is a very good thing, specially when wielded against US big tech.
tinco 7mo ago
No we can't. In the early 2000s we desperately tried to get our governments to be less dependent on Microsoft and we completely failed. Europe is not a federation like the US, worse many of the countries in Europe themselves are governed much like federations. We are easy prey for big American corporations. It's easy for Palantir to sell their product and then a thousand little government organizations will claim there simply is no alternative at the same quality level.
- tossandthrow 7mo ago
  Now, the EU can, using the anti coercion instrument.
- noisy_boy 7mo ago
  > In the early 2000s we desperately tried to get our governments to be less dependent on Microsoft and we completely failed You didn't have the great unifying dislike of the orange man as a motivating factor then. Now you do and I would wager there is significant public support behind getting away from reliance on the US.

0x3f 7mo ago

> A powerful company enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran. Ah yes, European issues

kylecazar 7mo ago
Things Palantir does in other countries is fine cause for not wanting it deployed in your own
- 0x3f 7mo ago
  Perhaps, but one would think those aren't the prime issues meriting first mention. I went in hoping for details of what Palantir is doing wrong _in Europe_, but all I got was some rallying the base cliches.
  - kakacik 7mo ago
    We prefer seeing all humans as equal, and not setting their value based on their passports like US does. Also, shit done elsewhere will be repeated in all other places, no reason to doubt that.
- 9864247888754 7mo ago
  [flagged]
pavlov 7mo ago
Not yet because they’re not operating in Europe yet. There are enough far-right (and generally Putin-aligned, like Hungary) forces on the continent that they’d love to feed.
- 0x3f 7mo ago
  > Not yet because they’re not operating in Europe yet. They're definitely operating in Europe. They literally have 15 offices scattered around.
7mo ago

mcosta 7mo ago

Europe needs its own Palatir

mrlonglong 7mo ago

The UK has decided to terminate Palantir contracts when they become due for renewal. Not before time.

hkt 7mo ago
Not before handing over an enormous cache of NHS patient data to them during the pandemic. If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute.
- mrlonglong 7mo ago
  Yes whoever decided to let them do this has a lot of explaining to do. This data should never have left the UK.
  - GuestFAUniverse 7mo ago
    Grab them by the balls and make sure they are never able to make a political decision with such an impact again.
- Silhouette 7mo ago
  If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute. Does anyone have a verifiable source for that? It would be extremely controversial if true and even among the big civil liberties and privacy advocacy groups in the UK I have never seen anyone make that claim. The defence to using Palantir by British government departments and public services has typically been that Palantir only provides the technology and the data itself is still held and processed in the UK under the native organisation's control. Even this is still controversial because of issues like the CLOUD Act and the general reputation of Palantir. But that is a long way from allowing the mass export of sensitive personal data to a US firm without the data subjects' knowledge or consent. That looks just plain illegal under our existing data protection legislation. Green lighting it - even in the panic phase during COVID - would probably be controversial enough to end a few political careers at least. It might even leave enough of a cloud over the party in government at the time to affect a future election.

deaux 7mo ago

Sure, Europe should absolutely be saying no to Palantir. However > A powerful company enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran So does Google, so does Meta, so does Oracle. What do you think all that Palantir software runs on in the clouds? On Palantir's own huge datacenters? They don'thave those. The huge bulk of it runs on it on clouds provided my Microsoft, Amazon, Google. Meta in particular causes such ridiculously larger amounts of societal damage that focusing so much energy on Palantir specifically is a dead giveaway it's not really about harm caused, it's about optics. Because they themselves likely use WhatsApp and Instagram, yet they don't knowingly use Palantir products. If you're going to single out one US tech company as "we need to stop cooperating with them", I don't see how it can be any other than Meta. It's like telling someone morbidly obese to stop eating a single cookie per day rather than the 5 cheese pizzas they're also having. Maybe the cookie is slightly worse per gram, but it's also completely ineffective to focus on.

Mordisquitos 7mo ago
Indeed. It is very disappointing that they chose that as the opening paragraph of their "Why" section, without even making the attempt to relate those points as to why Palantir in Europe would be bad for European citizens. As someone who strongly supports European digital sovereignty and eliminating dependency on the US, I'm frankly very tired of so damn much of the activist discourse around these issues revolving around US-centred topics. Yes, sure, Gaza is not the US, and the US-Israel war with Iran is bad for Europe, but those are damn well not the reasons we should say no to Palantir. If the Israel-Gaza conflict hadn't reignited a couple of years ago and thus Gaza wasn't on everybody's minds, and if the Iran attacks hadn't (yet) happened, should we then have nothing to say as to why we don't want Palantir than it's provision of services for internal US immigration policies? Maybe I should be grateful they haven't also listed Palantir being involved in period-tracking of American women in the wake of the reversal of Roe-vs-Wade. Jesus Christ, won't the most vocal pro-European activists please stop making everything about US talking points, and start being able to take a stance from basic principles and our own interests?
- scorpionfeet 7mo ago

__natty__ 7mo ago

I wonder what the alternative for Europe might be? A new project to launch, or is there an existing solution? Siren? Argon? In any case, it could be a great opportunity for Europe to create new jobs whilst increasing its sovereignty.

Xelbair 7mo ago
Why? why would we need to fund and make Europen Alternative to Surveilance (tm) when we could just you know - not have it at all?
wolvoleo 7mo ago
Even if it's nothing that would be a big win.
Bombthecat 7mo ago
d.AP, itemis, datawalk, helsing. There are a few alternatives, depending what you want.
- aitchnyu 7mo ago
  Did Helsing get its name from the fictional vampire hunter family?
  - rvz 7mo ago
    All of them are just as bad a Palantir.
    - Bombthecat 7mo ago
      No that's not true, some try to do it by the book ( ai act, gdpr, and follow German law etc) but they won't have any chance on the market, because those who ignore any law will provide more information / control etc for police, state etc etc
tsimionescu 7mo ago
Palantir's technology, as its own name suggests, is inherently dangerous, regardless of who controls it. The right alternative is to simply not build capabilities similar to Palantir in the EU - ideally, to legally forbid building them at all. This type of aggregated data flow simply gives too much control to whoever has access to it, and thus greatly harms democracy.

lucasay 7mo ago

Petitions don’t do much on their own, but they’re often how pressure starts. And ‘not European issues’ feels off when these companies operate globally anyway.

LightBug1 7mo ago
Pressure is building, thankfully. It's not just petitions now, but legal groups getting involved, etc. At least in the UK. Hopefully it spreads like wildfire around Europe. The orange Oompa Loompa is likely helping kindle those flames nicely.

bicx 7mo ago

No to Palantir in Europe

layer8 7mo ago
So you used voice dictation?

helf 7mo ago

I love how Palantir is comically evil. Their logo being the Palantir from LoTR (duh) and all. It's wild to me lol. They don't even try to pretend anymore.

redanddead 7mo ago

say no to palantir in america too they're giving startups an awful name in the eyes of the people, supposedly by the guy teaching others how to do startups, good grief

y1n0 7mo ago
What’s the definition of startup these days? Palantir is 23 years old with 4000+ employees. It’s publicly traded. What makes it a startup?

chopete3 7mo ago

>> Palantir enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran. Out of technical curiosity,where do we find more on how Palatir is helping technically?. Types of ML jobs they are running? Open source or AI models they are using.

inaros 7mo ago
"Palantir’s Architecture: Analyzing the Ethics of Surveillance AI" - https://erikabarker.ai/data-analysis/the-palantir-paradox-democracys-most-dangerous-servant/ https://erikabarker.ai/data-analysis/the-palantir-paradox-de... "All the Ways Palantir is Assisting Trump’s Abusive Removal Campaign" - https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/palantir-deportation-roundup https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/palantir-deport... "‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid" - https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-find-neighborhoods-to-raid/ https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-f... "The seer and the seen: Surveying Palantir’s surveillance platform" - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2022.2100851#abstract https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2022.2... "ICE Using Palantir Tool That Feeds On Medicaid Data" - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/report-ice-using-palantir-tool-feeds-medicaid-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/report-ice-using-palan... "How one company – Palantir – is mapping the nation’s data" - https://theconversation.com/when-the-government-can-see-everything-how-one-company-palantir-is-mapping-the-nations-data-263178 https://theconversation.com/when-the-government-can-see-ever... "AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying" - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam...
nerfbatplz 7mo ago
Palantir is part of the IDF's kill chain. In Gaza that means supporting the automated targeting systems that choose targets with little to no human oversight, and then the automated tracking systems that follow targets until they are at home with their families so that the entire family can be killed at once. https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticias/palantir-allegedly-enables-israels-ai-targeting-amid-israels-war-in-gaza-raising-concerns-over-war-crimes/ https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia... https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ >Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside. >“Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” A. said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”

epolanski 7mo ago

Instantly signed up. I'm already moving most of my clients out of any US-based offering. Azure and Jira are sticky, but they'll be out sooner or later.

KellyCriterion 7mo ago
Ex-Colleagues are launching a startup right now: No US-Services from the beginning on, only OpenSource and this new EU-Office thingy. I think more companies will join the train? Esp new & smaller ones, for sure there is no option for bigCorp like ASML to be free of US-cloud, but maybe its gaining traction.
- polyamid23 7mo ago
  What new EU-Office thingy?
  - pimeys 7mo ago
    https://office.eu/ https://office.eu/
  - grsmvg 7mo ago
    Reading this interview and the comments doesn't really spark a lot of confidence in the product (in Dutch): https://tweakers.net/reviews/14562/nextcloud-met-een-strik-erom-hoe-uniek-is-microsoft-365-concurrent-office-eu.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/14562/nextcloud-met-een-strik-e... I paints the picture of it being mostly a hyped marketing wrapper around Nextcloud that hasn't even launched yet.
- gip 7mo ago
  Surprised by this take. Building a startup is already insanely hard. So I wouldn’t like to add more challenge by spending time integrating with non-US services if they are not top just because of my political views. I feel a better answer is for Europe to build real, competitive alternatives to US services.
  - 7mo ago

lokimedes 7mo ago

Even Alex Karp openly recommends European countries to roll their own alternatives. If anyone in Europe insists on Palantir it’s by their own volition. The hard work is integration and data workflows, that is hard work regardless of the chosen “exploitation interface”.

delichon 7mo ago

Isn't this a bit like foregoing the use of gunpowder because it isn't chivalrous? If your enemies don't agree it doesn't end well.

airstrike 7mo ago
Not at all. It's against using Palantir specifically, not against the idea of something like Palantir "but European". It's literally at the very top of the article: - Stop signing new contracts with Palantir. - Review and phase out existing contracts with the company. - Invest in transparent, publicly accountable European alternatives. And Palantir isn't like gunpowder, so I'm not even sure the analogy had any legs to begin with
- raincole 7mo ago
  Half of the comments in this thread are expressing how they're very against the idea of something like Palantir "but European". It seems like some Europeans really believe that handicapping themselves is a good idea.
drums8787 7mo ago
No. The means can spoil the end.
gnerd00 7mo ago
perhaps, but civil law is a negotiated contract including rights of all involved. If a tech conglomerate invents new applications, are they now exempt from civil law? The era of the Nation State began when courts did have real means to enforce against powerful rogues. The suggestion that simply applying a new weaponized technology overrides the legal context is regressive.
dfxm12 7mo ago
Can you explain the comparison because on its face and especially given the context in the link, I don't see the connection.
badlibrarian 7mo ago

gradus_ad 7mo ago

Say No to Subsidizing European Defense

renewiltord 7mo ago

Oh boy, I'm looking forward to the brand new EU program to allocate one million dollars to eligible startups that can develop a weapons and targeting platform so long as all forms are filed well and a registered notary has read out the bill to all participants and each participant has read out the application so that informed consent is received.

BurningFrog 7mo ago

[dead]

niekiepriekie 7mo ago

But it’s already widespread in Europe, or at least in the Netherlands. Amsterdam Airport uses it, as do the Dutch police and the Dutch army. So shouldn’t it be: kick out Palantir?

thomasgeelens 7mo ago
Oh man I'm in NL, didn't know that, that's. .. dark.
- inaros 7mo ago
  "Dutch police also use controversial AI intelligence software by American Palantir" - https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/22/dutch-police-also-use-controversial-ai-intelligence-software-american-palantir https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/22/dutch-police-also-use-controve... "Palantir is well on its way to conquering Europe" - https://www.euractiv.com/news/palantir-is-well-on-its-way-to-conquering-europe/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/palantir-is-well-on-its-way-to...
hashstring 7mo ago
Amsterdam Airport? Source?
- niekiepriekie 7mo ago
  Well, i don’t have a source. Its very hush hush, as even the part that the police is using it has been leaked by a redacted document. It’s crazy. https://www.privacynieuws.nl/binnenlands-nieuws/politie-en-justitie/nederlandse-politie-gebruikt-omstreden-software-van-palantir.html https://www.privacynieuws.nl/binnenlands-nieuws/politie-en-j...
  - hashstring 7mo ago
    Hm, ok, but you suspect that Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol Group I suppose) is using it?
illiac786 7mo ago

karl11 7mo ago

I don't think there has ever been a company so poorly understood (willfully or otherwise) as Palantir. They make a software platform, it does not come with any data, does not come connected to any datasources, etc. You can literally sign up right now for a trial and see this for yourself. It looks the same if you were to purchase a license. This headline might as well say 'Say No to PostgreSQL' or 'Say No to Excel' or 'Say No to Salesforce', etc. Wild.

surgical_fire 7mo ago
Is their code open? Can you somehow attest that the data it ingests is fully under control of the client that uses the platform? The comparison to PostgreSQL in particular is very poor in that regard.
- simianwords 7mo ago
  You can self host it on premises. I think the comparison is fair for most of the products offered by Palantir.
beepbooptheory 7mo ago
Ok but then why? Or, what's your point here? Like what would explain the behavior you are noting if it really is that absurd and seemingly arbitrary? Is the implication that they just have really bad PR?
tasuki 7mo ago
> This headline might as well say 'Say No to PostgreSQL' or 'Say No to Excel' or 'Say No to Salesforce', etc. Wild. Wat? These are wildly different things: > Say No to PostgreSQL Sure, if you self-host it, this would be a stupid thing to say. > Say No to Excel A little worse: it's proprietary and who knows what it does and where it sends your data. > Say No to Salesforce Way worse: they host the data, and who knows what they do with it.
- simianwords 7mo ago
  A lot of words but you could have simply searched to know that Palantir offers self hosting.

nicklo 7mo ago

or say yes? decel mentality like this is why europe is falling behind. some poor startup will try to backfill these contracts to be the new palantir of europe only to be cut at the knees by regulation and more outcry think piece boycotts like this. rinse and repeat until the us and china become the only relevant acceleration hubs on earth during the singularity

grokcodec 7mo ago

"powerful company enables genocide in Gaza" first sentence flags this as a complete load of malarcky

chme 7mo ago

I'm just wondering why this isn't a European Citizen Initiative (ECI)... I could not find any information on what kind of influence a online-petition on wemove.eu would have...

simianwords 7mo ago

How do we differentiate between genuine empathy and love for the world and simple virtue signalling? If USA weren't the one safeguarding (contentious but please read on) the world and its modern interests then we would end up with something much worse. If you only focus locally, it is quite easy to dismiss any form of killing, any form of surveillance and any form of inconvenience. This is "Defund the Police" meme all over again. I gain social points by showing my disgust against the killings and murder done by the west. I gain nothing by promoting what they safeguard and promote that is necessary for the world to function. Such dynamics will lead to self ownage at the long run but social status points for oneself in the short term.

kelipso 7mo ago
> we would end up with something much worse. Whenever I see this, I recognize it as obvious scaremongering.
- simianwords 7mo ago
  When I saw "defund the policy" I recognised it as virtue signalling.
  - bdangubic 7mo ago
    Same people that scoff at “Defund the Police” rejoice “Defund the Dept of Education” (and vice versa)
    - simianwords 7mo ago
      Question: do you agree police must be defunded?
      - bdangubic 7mo ago
        I agree that in both cases there is an issue that needs to be solved (see NYPD budget as example) so don’t take “defund” at face value but more like “radical changes are needed”

gobdovan 7mo ago

'Say "Yes" to Palantir not coming to Europe' - would have been the wording if the vote were organized by Romanian politicians. (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_presidential_impeachment_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Romanian_presidential_imp...)

avazhi 7mo ago

[flagged]

HDBaseT 7mo ago
If you're goal is to make everyone's life worse, then maybe good is the right word but for most people, Palantir does evil work.
- avazhi 7mo ago
  Palantir hasn’t made my life worse, though.
  - HDBaseT 7mo ago
    These things are hard to quantify. Palantir hasn't come into your house and stabbed you (yet) but the deep state surveillance network they enable is concerning and honestly undermines just about everything, voting, politics, equality, etc.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - avazhi 7mo ago
      > Palantir hasn't come into your house and stabbed you (yet) but the deep state surveillance network they enable is concerning and honestly undermines just about everything, voting, politics, equality, etc. Assuming I value democracy as much as you clearly assume I do (which I do not), wtf are you even talking about, man?
danny_codes 7mo ago
Their CEO is a loon for one thing. But also the concept of spying is generally unsavory. Nobody wants to be tracked. Palantir has proven that they have no ethical framework for who they work with. Essentially they fill a mercenary role in modern society. Nobody really trusts mercenaries, for obvious reasons.

periodjet 7mo ago

> Our political system has served the elite and maximised profit for too long, and now we’re seeing devastating effects on our environment, our economy, our democracy, and our everyday lives. That’s because the systems that are currently in place are built to benefit the rich and powerful. We want a better Europe. One that takes climate action seriously, puts well-being first, welcomes those seeking refuge with open arms, listens to the needs of people, and protects nature. These people are telling themselves (and others) stories of their own creation, disconnected from any empirical testing of the reality around them. Disturbing to witness, particularly how many people read something like this and without a shred of critical thought say “damn, that sounds good! Sign me up!”

thrance 7mo ago
What exactly do you disagree with here? The statement is not very substantive and a bit simplistic, but it's not exactly wrong either. Inequalities are rising, and the system is biased in favor of the owning class. The environment is more often than not forgotten about in lawmaking, which will lead to dire consequences down the line.
lovelearning 7mo ago
To me, the assumptions in your comment about them and their views seem much more like stories of your own creation, likely without any empirical testing of the reality around you.

michele_f 7mo ago

Palantir is currently used by Unicredit.