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Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

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Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#201

Post by ineedasername »

Aurornis wrote: post #142
Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

From what I've seen the focus on a few big companies can have a backwards effect on some people's sense of morals. I've heard a few people justify their work for unethical companies as "At least it's not as bad as what Facebook does". It can also have the opposite of the intended effect when it encourages beliefs that bad behavior is normalized in the industry. I've heard an executive try to drum up support for a pro…

"When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it"

I'm not sure there's a significant meaningful difference between direct selling and what they actually do, which is to make it available to target and manipulate people with extreme granularity. This is a huge part of why a person may not want their data to be held much less purchased to begin with, meaning it's "doesn't sell your data... but does or facilitates all of the things you do not want a group, in buying it from them, able to do."

It's a distinction without much practical difference.

Also: They buy your data from other brokers who do sell it, vastly enriching the degree to which customers of their ad platforms can make use of the data you already know they have far, far beyond your ability to know their full capabilities and the profile they have on you.

Again, it's not actually selling your data, but it's worth noting that when "they didn't believe it", that misconception was possibly helped along by Facebook or Google being on of the potential customers for that data either directly or via the proxy of a data broker whose largest customers are companies like that.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#203

Post by nickburns »

malfist wrote: post #186
bko wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think vegans should consider eating cows. If you care about sentient life and abuse, think about how much meat one cow produces. Killing a single cow can feed you for well over a year.

You say that like it's mandatory to kill sentient life to feed people. It isn't.

I can imagine this poster's chortle thinking to themself, 'they thought I meant the animals!'

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#204

Post by IAmBroom »

nomdep wrote: post #173
pphysch wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we didn't want Iran to have nukes, so we rugpulled the JCPOA and murdered the guy who declared a fatwa against nukes. We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) so we butchered 170 school girls and didn't apologize. We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon and directly induced Iran to close the Stra…

> We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) At least 20,000 according to Amnesty International, other independent sources claim 40,000. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-hap...

Can we agree on "thousands"?

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#205

Post by seattle_spring »

waffletower wrote: post #34

The company also chose to name itself after a fantasy scrying device corrupted by evil. There might be an ounce of self-fulfilling prophecy here.

Their stock is up something like 1500% since IPO. I can't imagine most employees there feeling like they're undervalued with that sort of equity valuation.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#206

Post by ffsm8 »

tdb7893 wrote: post #101
Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

My experience is that people will be able to justify anything that is "normal". I went vegan after learning too much of how the literal sausage is made and the amount of people who have unprompted (people are weird about it so I try to avoid talking about being vegan except for mentioning it quickly while declining food) said something along the lines of "factory farming is awful but I just love bacon" and laugh is l…

Eating meat is normal.

Yes, animals have feelings and are intelligent (to varying degrees, but generally a lot more then most think). Modern meat factories are absolute shit shows and it's outlandishly bad our societies treat the animals like that.

However, it doesn't have to be that way. And killing an animal for food which lived a nice life is perfectly fine. We're all part of the physical reality in which the survival of the fittest reigns supreme. Even if you want to put your head into the sand and deny this, animals eating each other is perfectly normal. And yes, humans are animals too.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#207

Post by [deleted] »

kjs3 wrote: post #149
uoaei wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It read like a longtime adderall addict who switched to clean meth a while ago.

It read like a C- college sophomore dudebro who read some Ayn Rand and Raspail and Yockey and said "I fucking am John Galt", hit a bong, and got to scribbling their 'manifesto'.

[deleted]

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#208

Post by nickburns »

ffsm8 wrote: post #206
tdb7893 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that people will be able to justify anything that is "normal". I went vegan after learning too much of how the literal sausage is made and the amount of people who have unprompted (people are weird about it so I try to avoid talking about being vegan except for mentioning it quickly while declining food) said something along the lines of "factory farming is awful but I just love bacon" and laugh is l…

Eating meat is normal. Yes, animals have feelings and are intelligent (to varying degrees, but generally a lot more then most think). Modern meat factories are absolute shit shows and it's outlandishly bad our societies treat the animals like that. However, it doesn't have to be that way. And killing an animal for food which lived a nice life is perfectly fine. We're all part of the physical reality in which the surv…

Nowhere did GP say animals eating animals is abnormal.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#209

Post by _factor »

ajkjk wrote: post #104
orochimaaru wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no “ethical” company. They will tend towards making money by means that can be interpreted as being legal. Sometimes they will do things not legal - but those are calculated decisions based on how much the profit from said actions is compared to how much they will pay out as fines. Ethics and laws are for chumps like us. Because we don’t have the financial and legal muscle to challenge the state.

this take is irritating because it implies that people at companies don't have to bother being ethical or holding the people around them accountable at a personal level for being ethical, as if it's somehow predetermined by the environment, being at a corporation, how you behave. Certainly it's true that the incentives of corporations push you to ignore ethics. But that's why they're ethics: they're precisely the thi…

Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well.

It is ok to harm another group of people financially and even personally because that’s what “business does”. Degradation being a ratchet that calcifies unethical behavior doesn’t help. Companies tend to get less ethical the older and larger they become.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#210

Post by jltsiren »

ien24sdq wrote: post #84
Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

This is a really important thing that people on the left in particular seem to consistently overlook: local incentives, emergent corporate behaviors, and the unconscious need to believe you’re “right” have way more explanatory power than “X is actually evil”.

The banality of evil is a well-known idea. That evil is often done by people who are just doing their jobs and see themselves as decent people.

Words are cheap, thoughts are cheap, and voting is cheap. A full-time job, on the other hand, is a substantial contribution towards something, and it comes with a huge opportunity cost. The job you have is a major factor in determining your moral character. Determining what kind of a person you actually are, as opposed to the kind of a person you believe to be, or wish you'd be.

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