Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys • Hacker News Board

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

#681

Post by ericmay » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #555

ericmay wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donald Trump is also bound by the dictates of Congress and the courts. If that’s your criteria as to who is “acting like a king” and your reference is yet another king who is constrained by the Congress and Courts, I’m not really sure what point your trying to make here. He isn’t a king nor does he act like one in the office of the President precisely because he is following the law (generally speaking, I don’t think…

> Your argument just makes “king” George out to be constrained in the way a president is. Your placing of King in quotes is bizarre. Like, you see a resemblance between the current president and an actual king, and your takeaway is to try to retcon history and claim the king was not a king? Your argument that someone can't act like a king unless they're breaking laws is a bad argument (and ignores the fact that this…

> Like, you see a resemblance between the current president and an actual king

No, I don't. An actual king isn't constrained by checks and balances, or the law, for the most part. You're just adjusting the definition of king here to fit your argument.

For example, you refer to King George being stymied or frustrated by some act of Parliament. Is he a king or president? Our president today (and since the founding of America) is similarly stymied and frustrated by some act of Congress. Are the presidents kings or are the kings presidents?

It seems like people are so hung up on the Twitter reality TV sports of politics that they've forgotten what a king is.

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

#682

Post by ericmay » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #549

ericmay wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I just don't agree with your assessment. Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". Trump, as despicable and annoying as he is certainly says a lot, but he's not doing anything from what I can tell that isn't at least poorly argued that he has a right or legal justification for doing. A king or queen needs no such justification, and if one is going through the motions and being forced…

Sorry, but I just can't agree with your assessment: > Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false. If many folks are saying a thing, there is more evidence of it being true than if "anyone" says it. The consensus here seems to be that the current USA president is acting like a king. To alter the consensus, make a successful argument…

> This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false.

You're right, it doesn't mean that. But it belittles the accusation. Folks sometimes refer to their children as little tyrants. Conservatives would say Obama or Biden were acting like kings issuing edicts.

If you want to argue about this because you're interested in the mudslinging, that's fine but that's a separate discussion: a discussion about reality TV, not reality in offices of the government.

> The consensus here seems to be that the current USA president is acting like a king.

Current consensus is usually wrong, doubly so in this case. He might tweet a bunch of things, yet he's still constrained by the rule of law and the Congress, and the Court.

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

#683

Post by ericmay » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #590

ericmay wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions. This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civ…

> This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world Yes it is. And it can be done quite quickly in the modern world.

It's not, and the evidence for that at least partially rests in the War Powers Act as Congress itself realized it wasn't enough. Who am I to argue with Congress? :)

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

#684

Post by guzfip » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #551

anon84873628 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But FYI, Phelan was just a private equity guy installed by Trump. The reason he was fired is because he wasn't building the "Trump class" battleships Trump wanted. Which were supposed to have WW1 era appearance because Trump is an "aesthetics guy" and doesn't like the look of modern stealth ships. I kid you not.

> Which were supposed to have WW1 era appearance because Trump is an "aesthetics guy" and doesn't like the look of modern stealth ships. Wait, that's actually based as fuck. The 20th-century battleships were the pinnacle of human architecture, let him have this one.

[flagged]

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

#685

Post by ericmay » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

stasomatic wrote: post #485

ericmay wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just up to those that we elected to make a decision or enact legislation. If they decide tat the president isn't senile enough, then that's just what they get to decide. Sometimes I think folks are expecting there to be an ever increasing system of accountability or authority to appeal to, but no it's just those people and they get to decide. If you don't like their decision, outside of the ballot box or whateve…

I'll bite. What's in it for them ("They are the authority")? Weathering the weather until the next election? I'm prone to assuming that people higher on the totem pole are smarter, more experienced, more nuanced, better educated, that's on me.

I don't follow the question. What do you mean what's in it for them? They simply disagree with you and they get to make that decision.

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

#686

Post by red-iron-pine » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:06 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #284

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 quote immediately stood out: > Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism? Their framing is wrong. The beliefs and internal politics of the people making the surveillance tools don't matter. The fact is they're making tools to assist government overreach, and anyone with any political awareness (or maybe more importantly here, objectivity) could have seen that. They're just the enablers.

lol what? "it's not that corporations could be evil, it's the gubermnt!"

meanwhile large corporations literally bribe trump -- they're the ones calling the shots, and the government is just the organ

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

#687

Post by ericmay » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #483

ericmay wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true and it's disappointing fear-mongering from Vice (or anyone else who publishes this stuff). The reason you know it's true is because Trump doesn't care about precedent, yet in court case after court case that he or his administration lose they follow the law, even if it is imperfect or later attempted to be argued under a different standing. The same thing that is true for Donald Trump now was…

This is demonstrably false. In the case of removing migrants, the court ordered the practice halt and flights get turned around. The court also found evidence of contempt from the federal government due to noncompliance, although another appeals court stopped the contempt investigation. In the Kiyemba decision, the court identified a pattern of 96 violations across 75 or so cases. Detainees were held despite release…

I'm not trying to be pedantic, but can you cite the specific court cases or provide an up to date article discussing them so we have somewhere to start? The reason I am asking for this (and no worries if you don't want to dig any of this up) is because each case has specific nuance that is worthy of discussion, and in some cases (pardon the pun) the court order wasn't the final say pending appeal or actual Constitutional authority arguments were pending or legitimate.

Separately, if you want to claim that the Trump Administration is acting like a king because they've refused to comply with a single court case, then of course you have to extend that same categorization to any president who has ignored or circumvented a court order. But why stop there? Why not governors or private persons? Why do some have the luxury of seemingly ignoring Congressional subpoenas?

The Trump Administration has also lost quite a number of court cases and he has failed to prosecute his political enemies. If he were a king he would be ignoring much more than just a few court orders, folks would be in jail, &c.

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

#688

Post by NonHyloMorph » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

Ritewut wrote: post #428

tapland wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but tons of things are awful. For me I couldn't keep doing things I knew caused immense suffering in other beings, be it humans or animals. (Sourcing things from ethical whatever and reducing consumption in general the last two decades, I'm sad my iPhone 6 isn't supported for banking so have to go android 10 etc). Vegetarian options got cheap, and I still eat locally produced eggs and some milk products. But lik…

Few people can afford to give a shit. Most people are getting the cheapest meat and dairy they can get from Walmart.

It's still not cheaper to have a very meat rich diet then to have one that is mostly plant based; or entirely vegetablebased plus milk and eggs from local production - which wouldn't get you in some of the difficulties vegsns have to desl with, where they need to take some nutrients in the form of supplements if they don't absolutely optimize their diet (which again becomes expensive - would be interesting to be corrected here)

All that is to say: some people act less ethical then others, and should have to accept that fact - instead of trying to produce an image of the self (to themselves mostly but also to others) that conceals it; be it through normalization ("guess we all do that"), rationslization ("if i wouldn't do it someone else would"), or blame shifting (if someone would do this and that i would behave like that, so it's up to them to provide me with xyz)

edit: I apply that to myself. I know that I don't act as ethical as I could regarding the consequences of my diet.

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

#689

Post by NonHyloMorph » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

card_zero wrote: post #646

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…

I'm disconcerted from the opposite direction, because it seems people feel uncritical compassion for anything with a face, and they want to prevent suffering but instead of caring about the complexities of human anguish they seem to define it as "pain signals in vertebrates", and they call this ethics, but they just base it on vibes, and so maybe all their morality is incoherent intuition.

Can we please get back to the topic of palantir? The whole eating meat discourse is interesting but also distracts from the topic at hand: do people working at palantir pose themselves question what it means for them to work for palantir? What do we think should be a proper ethical norm regarding people working at palantir?

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

#690

Post by chaosbolt » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

I mean it's another case of "Are we the baddies?" where they talk about having the skull on the uniform.

Like your company is literally called Palantir, after the object from the Tolkien universe (if you're living under a rock), which allows the user to see things happening in other places, and allows "A wielder of great power such as Sauron could dominate a weaker user through the stone".

Not only that but your company's founder goes around the world doing lectures about the Antichrist.

And if that wasn't enough, you're working with governments around the world to oppress citizens and have been complicit in a literal genocide by partnering with Israel in the past years.

I mean if you're not the baddies, then maybe Voldemort is just misunderstood, and the Joker is the good guy, etc.