The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
1–10 of 231 posts
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#2Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for?
I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#3Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice?
What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people.
Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#4Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice? What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people. Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?
The difference is in Pro Services. MS does not send employees from Redmond to help ICE use Excel.
Palantir does bundle software and services. Their software is so complex, it is typically Palantir employees building the models and analytics.
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#5Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice? What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people. Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?
I think the expectation is that Palantir should make lots of money selling software to other people, and then a portion of their profits and employee's salaries is required by law to go to funding ICE anyway. That seems to be what everyone else is okay with.
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#6Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice? What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people. Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?
Most enterprise software sales aren’t as low touch as an Excel license, and Palantir is very much on the high touch side of the spectrum. When Palantir sells software to a large government agency, that means squads of Palantir employees go to the government agency and help them run it, and that consulting effort is a huge component of what the customer is paying for.
Having said that, some people do think Microsoft should refuse to sell to ICE too.
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#7Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice? What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people. Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?
So you think there is no difference in guilt between being a war criminal’s arm dealer and being a war criminal’s grocer?
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#8Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
A great many expansions to the power of the state have been justified with the argument "this is to fight terror and child abuse"
Perhaps they signed up naively imagining they were working on a tool that would be used for that and nothing else?
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#9Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.
Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice? What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people. Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?
[deleted]
Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice? What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people. Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?
The difference is in Pro Services. MS does not send employees from Redmond to help ICE use Excel. Palantir does bundle software and services. Their software is so complex, it is typically Palantir employees building the models and analytics.
MS has professional services and they do send people to ICE to help use Excel. They also have an extensive partner network. Any large software company sells consulting services. I don’t know about Python, but RStudio sells professional services to help with use of R.