The Anti-Palantir Manifesto

The Anti-Palantir Manifesto
nonogra.ph

There are some points I agree with. I agree with things like intergenerational resource distribution, but overall, this is the anger of young people, and I actually like that anger.

They say it's code vs law, but that code only works on specific platforms. Everyone loves open source, but they forget that the infrastructure to run that open source actually sits on top of large corporations.

It's true that programmers are the designers of power structures. I've also worked on one of the biggest systems in my career—a real-time streaming site for gambling—and I agree with the idea that once you participate in that, your responsibility doesn't just disappear.

Personally, this reads less as an anti-Palantir manifesto and more as anger toward the old guard's power. I think even if Palantir disappeared, as long as demand and data exist, another company would take its place.

So if it's truly an anti-surveillance manifesto, it shouldn't target a specific company name, but rather how data flows and power combine to attack us.

If that were the case, it would also need to attack the contradictions within open source itself. It would have to list Google's wrongdoings, and mention how Google keeps Mozilla Firefox alive just to avoid antitrust laws. In the end, it wouldn't be a simple good vs evil narrative, but something more tangled and complex.

Anyway, I agree with the intent, but there are many points in the manifesto that I find hard to agree with.

Fundamentally, the aging of political leaders is a global issue. In reality, the average age of parliament members is higher than the average age of voters, and the overrepresentation of middle-aged to elderly men is a clear trend.

This is inevitable to some extent, because politics requires mobilizing campaign support, which costs a significant amount of money

[1]https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soc4.128...

[2]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-political-s...