There are a bunch of "emperor's new clothes" companies in the economy today. Palantir certainly seems like one of them.

What does a newspaper need "actionable intelligence" for?

To quote the CEO, "that allows us to engage users more effectively and monetize those relationships faster and at much greater value."

So they view their readers as something to be monetized. Not to be educated, not to be intellectually stimulated, not to have their questions answered, not to have their curiosity satisfied, not to provide them with anything a newspaper traditionally did. Nope, they are just a source of money. Get them to click, serve them an ad, sell their tracking data.

I immediately thought they might be trying to de-anonymize article Commenters. Maybe I'm being too paranoid.

Oh, I'm sure they are doing that too. Something else they think they can monetize (never mind that most of them are probably bots).