[theOGognf]

It’s ironic that HN threads, arguably one of the forums where the majority of users should understand a tech company and its tech, about Palantir always devolve into some weird speculative and conspiracy-like discussion. Palantir’s docs are pretty open too - it’s not like it’s a black box that you can only see if you have a contract with them. So one would think the HN crowd would know something and have an interesting discussion on how it compares to what they’ve seen, etc. But it somehow always turns mostly political and less about the tech

[tamimio]

It's because we understand technology very well and how it can be used to further control or surveil you. The tech itself isn't complicated; at best you would have a unified protocol that seamlessly integrates with all data sources, at worst, that part is done manually, but the rest of the tech isn't new as a concept, so there's really nothing to discuss technology-wise. However, as technical people, we can see how something can be used in a bad way or at least, sometime in the future based on the current trend, and it's necessary to discuss such implications even if it's political. For example, when a messaging app requires a phone number to activate, it's essential to highlight that it could be exploited in a SIM swap attack (thus the user should not trust it) or it could leak that number which will expose this person's real identity. And in this case, having so much information collected and shared and easily accessed by one centralized entity is never a good indicator. It's also ironic that the people who used to (still?) attack China and other countries for being surveillance state Orwellian dystopias while virtue signaling all democracy and freedom values, are now okay with such data collection and processing and potential red flagging for things as simple as social media posts.