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bluegatty | 7 days ago

I don't think it's at all fair to make this kinds of inference from what was written, you'd have to make huge assumptions, and also take an ideological perspective as well. It might be a perfectly valid critique ... but it can't be at all inferred from the comment.

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echelon|7 days ago

I'm really puzzled. I frequently post scathing criticisms of government spying on HN.

I'm one of the top HN commentors for the string "1984" and led to 10% of the mentions last year (as someone else blogged about).

I was just admiring the operations and scaling of it. It's pretty impressive to grow to such a scale.

bluegatty|7 days ago

A lot of people, especially outside the US are going to look through a cynical geopolitical lens, which is not entirely unreasonable, so it's not 'surprising' at all that people would jump on this.

For example, I think Musk is a horrible person and I view all of his statements through the 'lens' of the fact he is lying, confabulating and he's a jerk.

But - I mean, SpaceX does work, it's by all means a pretty good company (work-life balance not withstanding).

It's really hard to separate these issues.

runarberg|7 days ago

That admiration is the tone deafness I perceived. It comes across as “we gotta hand it to ISIS” in its best interpretation.

Palantir has been on Amnesty International’s list of companies aiding in human rights violations since 2020, in particular for aiding DHS and ICE in illegal deportations and family separations, in 2023 the company provided tech to the IDF which was then used in the Gaza Genocide, the company prided it self of it (and consequently a lot of their staff resigned as their morality did not allow them to work there). This is just to say we are not just talking about government spying here, Palantir is a major participant in many of the worlds worst human rights abuses of the past decade.

Palantir is probably the company on the planet right now who is perceived by the general public as the most evil, and I for one think this company deserves this reputation. One does not, in fact, got to hand it to Palantir.