No they won't, unless they are flat out lying. They can lie, but considering they have many customers all over the world, mostly big companies with big legal departments, it may not be the best for their business.

Palantir produces data analysis tools, this is basically Excel but for bigger data sets. Microsoft doesn't get what you put into your Excel sheets (not really sure now...) and neither does Palantir with their platform.

They probably have some sort of telemetry to monitor how their tools are used, to "improve user experience", like most large software vendors. But it is not related to the data being processed.

This is right. Palantir is a suite of tools or platform that a company uses to analyze their own data.

Palantir develops many of the tools which implies they’ve run them themselves also. For example, they have tools for scraping social media platforms to build profiles of people. You don’t build those tools without running them along the way. They just make their clients run them most of the time for liability reasons (it’s a lot harder to prosecute the CIA for spying)

They brag repeatedly about their “data collection” methods although of course details are hard to find. I’m not convinced they just make the tool and have no access to the data.

What do you have to convince you otherwise?

They’re a famously shadowy secretive spying company and nowhere do I see a terms of service that says they don’t collect data on me. They’ve previously discussed their tools for spying on Facebook and other “public” sites and it seems clear they must have run them at some point. They come in and modify their software to work especially for a customers needs.

Are you familiar with Project Maven? They gather drone data and have humans label it so they can plan drone strikes and other intelligence efforts.

Palantir builds tools for other government agencies to analyze their own data. Palantir the company doesn't see the data that Palantir the tool (Gotham or Foundry) is used to analyze.

Why do you still believe the bullshit corporate PR? Snowden, Manning, Assange... Crypto AG, Cambridge Analytica, etc. How many times does it need to happen for us to see it?

The only real solution I've found is to help build the fully agent-centric web, where there are no third parties - full P2P Protocol Cooperativism. [1] [2]

[1] https://medium.com/holochain/holochain-reinventing-applicati...

[2] http://developer.holochain.org

Because I worked at Palantir. Can you point to sources specifically claiming that Palantir itself, not the organizations using Palantir, are accessing people's data? Because if so, this is news both to me and to a lot of other former and current Palantir employees.

Palantir the company doesn't have access to the data. The government agencies have access to the data. Palantir licenses its software to these organizations. The company doesn't have special access to any sensitive data.

> Because I worked at Palantir

Well that's a good reason.

The point I'm making is that I don't agree on Palantir's approach and strategy. If you watch the Ava Duvernay's documentary '13th' you'll see that systemic oppression of black bodies never ended. The school-to-prison pipeline guarantees exploitation and incarceration of the US's dark history of slavery and genocide.

So instead of Palantir pushing for systemic change, I see their technology as regressive and focused on giving power to unjust causes.

If you want to read more about how algorithms recreate bias, there's quite a lot of material that has come out recently. Here is an important point from Algorithsm of Oppression:

※ Those who have the power to design systems--classification or technical [like library, museum, & information professionals]--hold the ability to prioritize hierarchical schemes that privilege certain types of information over others.[1]

There's also another book called Automating Inequality, among others.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2206336831?book_show_a...

> Are you familiar with Project Maven?

There seems to me to be a strong neoliberal/libertarian population on Hacker News who believes, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, that 'there is no alternative'. They have completely soaked up Silicon Valley's Imperialist 'Manifest Destiny' mission.

They can't see their own privileged position and power. They attribute their own success to their personal efforts, instead of seeing how various social institutions (including knowledge and access to a rich scientific inheritance) built them up.

So when we pose them a question about Project Maven, they want to identify the one 'bad apple' [1] instead of facing the fact that systemically something is rotten, and that we might have to evolve the underlying architectures. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNZXV7jOG0&feature=youtu.be

[2] https://medium.com/holochain/holochain-reinventing-applicati...

I find their argument somewhat disingenuous, as they are paid for that mining directly by governments (they famously created the MVP with the express intent of selling it to the US), and therefore have never needed to consider advertising.