- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
You must log in or # to comment.
can’t blame them; there were no signs in the beginning.
Employees of Evil Corp wondering if what they’re doing benefits Evil
Fuck around and find out. Goddamn idiots should have known what they’re getting into. Like their boss having moments of megalomania.
There are two surprising aspects of this to me. Firstly that the employees feel confident enough to express concern about Palantir’s actions in official channels. I would have thought that the nature of their work was obvious enough that this would be a cultural taboo and therefore self-censored. I guess some of them have limits to suspending disbelief for what they had likely internally framed as “work for the benefit of national security” or “job pays too well to care”.
The second part is that not all of this official channel discussion was immediately wiped by Palantir, but perhaps they also relied on the premise of self-censorship in preventing these conversations at scale.
Either way, I’m somewhat relieved there’s someone at Palantir worried about this at all. The more of them who are worried by this, the more leaks we’ll see.
the last thing thiel wants its his shady company being in the news, he has always tried to prevent that.
they knew, you just justified because it was just a job.
Descent?
Exact thing I was thinking.
In order to descend, you have to not start out wanting to enable it. Isn’t “Empower the evil bastards of the world” their mission statement?
the words coming out of my mouth in disbelief are mirrored as the first comment
Wow, must be bad if even the fascists are seeing the ‘descent’ into fascism as a bad thing.
What descent? There is no descent. They started at bedrock since the beginning. People should have seen it back then.
Sarcasm is rather hard to detect over text, especially when I don’t add sarcastic quote marks…
and a company named palintir too, an objected used by sauron to corrupt people spying.
Sleepy Barney Rubble ruined that.
Or do they mean similar to a plane landing at an airport?
Wait…just now!? Lol, even in online tech circles where people are completely willing to throw their morals in the trash in exchange for a job, it’s been well known for quite some time now that Palantir is the tippity top of “sell your soul for money” place to work at. This was long before Thiel was in the news and Palantir was selling data and tech to ICE.
Why would it be surprising that you sold your soul to a bunch of fascists, and if you’re already working there, do you have even the slightest shred of morality left to even say a word about it!? Apparently so, but talk about drinking the company Kool-Aid. Damn…
None of them realized it before? Well then, if you can talk the talk, walk the walk and quit in masse.
Oh they realized. But it was their job. To question it might put them out of work. Can’t take the risk. Can’t do anything about it now - try to blame Theil or Trump - even though they are the ones that built it and looked the other way the entire time. It isn’t descending into fascist. It was being built to enable and protect fascism when it came back out in the mainstream.
You would think the name was a dead give away that they were cartoonishly evil?
I have no simpathy at all for them at all.
Why would you even name yourself after the Palantiri, they’re literally tainted with bad omens.
They are implied to be made by Fëanor, who in rage perpetuated a mass-slaying of his kin because they refused to give him their boats, which he needed for his crazy revenge quest.
Some were then literally used by Sauron, who literally is the servant of basically Satan, to gain knowledge so he could conquer Middle-earth.
Like why would you think that’d be a good name for a company.
It’s because they’ve read the books, know they’re popular, want to be hip and interesting, and completely miss the morality of the books they think they love.
Look at Musk naming barges after space ships from a society where people can change gender practically at will, yet can’t deal with the fact that his daughter is transgender.
I’d thought it was more active vice signalling, like they want everyone to know they’re evil.
Probably because you have the hubris necessary to believe that if the One Ring were in your hands, you would be strong enough to wield it without becoming corrupted.
Samwise was a fictional character sadly
A few years ago, I had an acquaintance that was trying to join the CIA. She got several rounds into the interview process but ultimately took a job at Meta (who she was also interviewing with). She got fired in one of the later mass layoffs, but she chose to work there. She knew the kind of company they were and are, and she was like, “They gonna pay me lots of money? Then I’m in!” And look how that worked out.
There is no world in which these companies are doing anything good, and if you think they are, then you’re the ignorant rube they want to help bring about technofascism, and they’re fine tossing you into their grinder as meat as they please.
I was recently recruited by Meta, had a bad feeling, did some research, and sure enough, it was was a terrible place to work, by all accounts. I already had doubts about Meta and deleted my Facebook account over a decade ago. Needless to stay I withdrew my candicacy.
Like attracts like. I hope all these people selling their souls and their country out for money to companies like Meta and Palantir, who make money hand over first by actively making society less safe and free, get what’s coming to them.
I would never work for Meta, TikTok, Palantir, etc no matter how much they paid me.
Palantir was founded—with initial venture capital investment from the CIA—at a moment of national consensus following the September 11, 2001, attacks, when many saw fighting terrorism abroad as the most critical mission facing the US.
You mean the backlash to our constant and brutal meddling with the will and sovereignty of the rest of the world, the pillaging and raping of both the earth and the humans who occupy it for our own monetary gain? Living like kings through acts of evil so we could parade around calling ourselves The Greatest Country, and even going so far as to hide the worst of the worst atrocities from our own citizens, and the things that couldn’t escape the historical record being swept away as “but we’re better now!” and pretending that just by “stopping” (which we almost never actually do, we just hide it better) that we’ve fixed the problems?
That terrorism?
I guess 30% of Americans really did know it, and they voted for the most American man they knew of. God this place sucks.
Decent? It was always in plain sight. Palantiri, hello?
well known for 10+years, and the way thiel named the company too.
People are fucking stupid.
That’s neat, thanks for the lore
I still have only vague ideas what they even are and do and why they are special. Yeah, marketing, data brokering, spying, PR, social engineering, propaganda, but then how does that differ from Meta and Google.
now delving into peddling the struggling AI system they are using.
Werent palantir those shady orbs from LOTR? You know, the backports sauron used to spy on us…
The palantíri were created by elves and weren’t inherently evil. It was only when Sauron captured them and exerted his will over them to make it difficult for anyone to use them without sending straight to him that they became evil.
thiel never getting that far into the context, is only obsessed with spying on people.
Oh he knows. There are several quotes from him acknowledging that he is evil. He does not care as long as it supports his vision for the future.
This may an overly cynical take, though that seems hard to do these days, but I’ve always believed they are intentionally vague… even to their customers.
They were a tool for good before they were corrupted, though.
Were they, though?
Ungoliant says, “yes.”
No they weren’t?
https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Palantíri
How Are so many people so ignorant and confident at the same time? You’re all acting like you know what you’re talking about…
Oh you mean in fiction!
Descent into
Glad some of them are finally realizing it at least.
“the arm patch, disposal of and disdain for law, security and privacy, alignment with fascists…all of that seems pretty innocuous and normal but when we bored into FDAs data, wow, that really opened my eyes”
Nuremberg 2.0 testimony
Hilarious!
Right? Either this is bullshit ‘news’ (high probability) or Palantir employs some truly stupid people.
It’s mission statement was always been “Extreme authoritarianism and subjugation of the individual to the interests of the surveillance state.”
A decade ago a young an gifted software developer acquaintance of mine was going to work for Palantir and already back then I warned him of the kind of company he was joining.
After the Snowden Revelations it was already pretty obvious that Palantir specialized in data analytics of and overview interfaces for mass surveillance data - they made their money from helping authoritarian activities, including those in supposed Democracies.
It’s pretty obvious that a company doing that is built on the principled of having no Ethics or Morals.
Go to bed with the dogs, wake up with fleas.
i first became aware of the company, when i was searching on lore about the lotr objects, what you know it led to a website owned by thiel, and then it became more apparent when helped sued gawker who was likely investigating thiel on his companies shady practices.
“Descent”? As in even further than rock bottom?
they’re gonna drill
