For an idea as to how this gets translated into the reality on the ground here in Minneapolis this is an article on what’s going on from the main newspaper in the state.
> In the past week alone, ICE boxed in a Woodbury real estate agent recording their movements from his car, slammed him to the ground and detained him at the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling for 10 hours. A 51-year-old teacher patrolling the Nokomis East community told the Star Tribune she was run off the road into a snowbank by ICE for laying on her horn. Officers shattered the car window of a woman attempting to drive past a raid in south Minneapolis to get to a doctor’s appointment nearby, then carried her through the street. Feds pushed an unidentified motorist through a red light into a busy intersection, reportedly fired projectiles at a pedestrian walking “too slowly” in a crosswalk and shoved Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne while he was observing their actions from a public sidewalk.
If all those things happened in Spain where I live, I'm 99% we'd have actual riots on the streets, together with a lot of other unpleasant-but-needed civilian action, until things got better, like we've done in the past (sometimes maybe went slightly overboard with it, but better than nothing).
Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots? How are you not fighting back with more than whistles and blocking them in cars? Is there more stuff actually happening on the ground, but there simply isn't any videos of it, or are people really this passive in the land of the free?
Are people inside the country not getting the same news we're getting on the outside? Are you not witnessing your government carrying out extra-judicial murders and then being protected by that same government? I'm really lost trying to understand how the average person (like you reading this) isn't out on the streets trying to defend what I thought your country was all about.
A pervasive "Someone needs to do something!!!" attitude is why. Americans will forever wait for the school principal to come and get everyone into trouble
>Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots?
Why would I want to riot over immigration enforcement enforcing immigration laws? The immigrants who might be inclined to riot over this are probably trying to not draw attention to themselves.
A member of Governor Walz’s staff is the publisher of that newspaper.
Steve Grove has been the CEO and Publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune since April 2023. Prior to that, he served as Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED)—a cabinet-level position—under Governor Walz from 2019 until early 2023. Walz appointed him to that role, and Grove's departure from state government was publicly congratulated by Walz when he transitioned to the newspaper.
If you work for Palantir and if you work on these systems: You have blood on your hands. You know that it's not right what is happening on the ground right now. Do something.
Yes, Palantir folks have self selected for the first two over and over - anyone working there for many years now is completely blacklisted from anything I touch, when someone advertises ex-Palantir folks in the job description I know I can safely avoid that company forever.
The unfortunate converse is there are plenty of other software companies looking for that .gov money that would pick these less than scrupulous employees right up.
> 3. Are more worried about their next paycheck and having bad things happen to them related to not paying rent.
i feel like a broken record: anyone with a resume good enough for Palantir would have no problem finding work for another company/public sector employer. but they stay.
It’s hard to prove without knowing the app devs, but for points 1 & maybe 2, we can look at whether Americans think the raids are justified.
28% of them think they are [0]. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that the devs would be part of that number
Edit: it looks like the poll it’s for the recent incident of the woman who was shot - my mistake. Then I would assume the number for the raids themselves is higher
> JP Doherty did not want to sign the email. But he knew he didn’t have a choice. His son, Rhys, was scheduled to have strabismus surgery in January, correcting an eye issue that made it difficult for him to walk on his own. The procedure cost $10,000 out of pocket. Doherty discussed the decision with his wife, and while she wanted him to be able to quit, they both knew the kids needed his health insurance. [0]
A Palantir rep was supporting one of our exercises late last summer, and he said "Knowing what I know about how the military is going all-in on Maven....I recommend buying Palantir stock."
I picked up a few shares, but I haven't checked if Palantir's growth has been unique or part of a general military-industrial complex melt-up.
Nah, free blood money was when my General Dynamics shares went from $60->$120, then did a stock split and went from $60-> ~$100. I think that was in....2005? The Stryker (a GD product) was coming into service in Iraq, which drove my purchasing decision. I was an E-4 in Korea at the time and thought I was a defense stock-picking genius.
I had to pull out of US stocks/market completely last year after I felt dirty just having money in a country sliding into authoritarianism. Interesting where different people draw different lines :)
Palantir does not work in a vacuum - it requires other technology, platforms and systems to operate and succeed - many of which are designed and maintained by the users of Hacker News.
Certainly you must be aware that there are not just binary values of morality in life. The obvious answer is yes they are stained, as we all are through our participation in various systems, but with vastly varying amounts.
Is the manufacturer of the bomb responsible for when Israel drops it on a family home in Gaza? Yes. Is it the same responsibility as the general who gave the order? No. Is it the same as the pilot who followed the order? No.
Does that make it useless to hold people accountable? Of course not.
Respectfully, this is cheap cope. The bomb maker didn't know when he made the bomb, maybe. Now he knows, as do all the people turning the gears on this meat grinder, including a bunch of people here.
If you value your comfy life over the well being of others and the future of not only the country, but without an ounce of hyperbole, the human race, then keep your head down. If you don't, fuckin DO SOMETHING.
You know all those times you've said or heard others say "well if I was in Germany in the 30's...." well, guess what, games fuckin real now. So act like the person you want to be.
Palantir is built explicitly for surveillance, in a way the other companies you listed are not. There is no comparison here. It's like saying the City of Minneapolis is complicit because they maintain the roads ICE is driving on.
> If you work in technology, you are part of this force, whether you like it or not.
Disappointing to see you downvoted. I agree with this partially, but only because I think it applies more broadly.
I work in tech (although not in Big Tech/Mag 7/FAANG/whatever they're called now), and I feel quite acutely that anyone in the field is culpable in part for the enabling the absolutely massive dump that the capital-adjacent class is taking on the world to have their power play fantasies play out.
To the extent that I've started apologising on behalf of the field/profession to non-technical folks when they complain about yet another dark pattern/"growth hack" designed to steal their attention and money.
The US gov (including ICE) uses all of Microsoft Office for coordination and planning: email, spreadsheets, powerpoint, document generation, etc. Would you say Microsoft employees have blood on their hands too? If not, what makes Microsoft different?
> Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address
So essentially, the relevant app here is custom built in order to help ICE raids.
That's substantially different from generic office tech where ICE happen to be one of millions of users.
Considering that Microsoft is also providing services to the Israeli government with the explicit intent of storing and cataloging all of the phone calls made by Palestinian citizens so that they can be analyzed by AI for potential bombing targets...yes I would say Microsoft also has blood on their hands. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they have deep partnerships with Palantir for compute services.
Yes, absolutely. These are criminal scum, on par with pedos. Just look at how they are helping a people getting wiped out from their own territory in the Middle East.
Meh, I blame social media specifically and media generally for the state of our country. Why call out just Palantir. The US, maybe the world, would be better off if companies like Meta (and others) didn't exist....
That's a pretty broad generalization, but OK I'll bite.
- I think Yarvin has a lot of good points. No one should be ashamed to admit the truth of a matter. I can't stand his voice, I think he has annoying mannerisms, but nonetheless the man has a point and I'm not ashamed (especially by unknown and strange online personas) to say so.
- Palantir is objectively a profitable job. I've learned a lot here and the people I work with are brilliant.
- I don't think I have "blood on my hands" and rather instead think that people who use that tactic are resorting to strange emotional manipulation in place of a salient argument.
Let's be honest, simply conjecturing that someone ascribes to a political view isn't discourse. It's a potshot. You're assuming that anyone who reads your comment and leans in your direction is going to agree and vote with you. This is literally the lowest and cheapest form of engagement. It's also the most self serving. It does nothing to advance the conversation or prove your point.
Most importantly, this is the exact type of behavior that is furthering political polarization and discouraging actual discourse.
Wouldn’t it be even more fair to say that the people who allowed or even encouraged illegal immigration have blood on their hands because they know what they were doing and how the government would have to respond under the law? If we are going to use the line of reasoning you suggest then this should easily be on the table also.
In general, if you're working for Palantir, you're unlikely to find yourself in the right side of history. Whenever you hear of tech being used for questionable purposes, Palantir seems to have their fingers deep in the pie.
The Palantro CEO, Alex Karp, is on the record that he approves of what the president is doing in regards to immigration enforcement and the striking of boats in international waters.
And in 2016 he was a Clinton supporter and a self described progressive. Vance was also a never trumper by his own admission.
It’s quite clear to me that these elites are just grabbing power by any means necessary. It won’t end after Trump. He’s just providing the cover in the current moment.
I'm not sure why the down votes, I'm not being glib.
Go read the work of historians who study this. The transitions in Russia, Hungary, etc are well documented. There is a pretty solid consensus understanding of the dynamics, the typical playbook, etc.
I've been on the receiving end of federal enforcement (DOJ, high-profile "cybercrime"). When they want you, they don't need a confidence score. There is no quota—they take time to build a case. The existence of these tools tells you this isn't targeted enforcement, it's industrial-scale population processing dressed up in an algorithm.
Take the word "immigrant" out of the article and replace it with "citizen". Thats the end goal here, trace, track, monitor, control citizens. First they have to pursuade the U.S. citizens to accept this surveillance, thus they create these psyops based on "illegal immigrants" causing "havoc" to stir up anger and emotions in U.S. citizens in order for them to be on board with the raids, "arrests", surveillance, etc. Now, on another note is the darker side hidden in plain sight, produced by Homeland, cia, fbi and Freemasons, is the fact that they are creating these psyops and put their favorite Freemasonic number in every one, 33.
33 being the highest order one can get being a Freemason. If you look at the fake shooting of a character called Ren33 Good, youll see the 33 everywhere. The address was 33 east portland in Minneapolis, the 3300 block, then you have the double Portland Oregon ICE fake shootimg in which a fake "victim" was 33yrs old. Also the state of Oregon is the 33rd state...They link these together in your face but hidden. Also photo of agent in minneapolis of "police" with 33 on door. Oh and the fake renee good was "shot" 3 times. Now, also in a press conference, Jd Vance said the ice officer who "shot" ren33 good was dragged by a car months before and got 33 stiches... its all their theatrical movie productions in line with the news medias. Its like hackers creating fake websites, which people think are their banks etc...based on what seen on screen. This is not one time either, the 33 is in all of them, onè of the most promiment fake shootings was Tennesee trans school fake "shooting" Look into the 33s om that one, too much to list here.
This is what happens when one allows oneself to hide in "safe spaces" (like HN) where there's a "no politics" rule enabling people to hide and avoid being confronted with the ramifications of their actions.
The entire world runs on technology now. It's all inherently political.
This exactly hits in on the head. You're trying create a forum absent of politics. In fact, you're just enabling one political view over another. This hides social issues and in the end comes back to undermine your pure "technical view". It's not apolitical, it's disassociation from reality.
HN isn't even absent of politics, just the front page is really.
Everything we do is political. When we are making software and publishing it, whether or a company or ourselves, for sale or for free, there are political implications to those actions.
Exactly. Declaring that there must be no discussion when confronted with situations in which one party is doing harm to others, is an implicit endorsement of the harms being perpetuated.
Thank you all in this thread! I couldn't have put it better. I cannot stand "no politics rules". Politics divides and it is personal. But it shouldn't be either of those. We should be attacking policy and not people. No politics rules just deny reality because software doesn't exist in a vacuum without policy and money. Heck most people want to use software to get money which is a product of policy.
I'm going to defend the HN "no politics" rule here.
The reason "no politics" zones exist is because there are enough people going out of their way to shout at everybody, everywhere, in every corner of the internet and enough people are tired of it that they flock to...no politics zones. In real life, a person like that confronts you...you remove yourself from the situation, because that person who can't stop shouting at everybody comes across as nuts.
I think what op is getting at is that "no politics" rule is what allowed the frog to boil. So banning political discussion is political in and of itself.
I'd agree with your no politics preference if we were in a functioning society that wasn't actively spiralling towards fascism. I recognize that this line is blurry, and that's exactly the reason why no politics zones exist, there is always someone yelling about fascism. He might be a crazy guy on the corner who yells about everything.
I think the difference here is that there is a big critical mass of people who have recognized that the pillars on which our country sit are being actively sabotaged. It's not that everyone wants to be talking about politics all of a sudden, it's that the frog is finally boiling.
You can see in this threat that confronting people with the ramifications of their actions causes them to double down. They'll just come up with more and more justifications of why the victims deserve it. Same as every mass atrocity.
I don't think you can really blame HN specifically here. It's much wider than that; pretty much the tech industry as a whole actively discourages any kind of philosophical reflection on technology, at least the kind that says you shouldn't build something, even if it's profitable.
Yes, HN is my safe space. I have enough politics in my daily life, I don't need it when I'm with phone in my bed trying to wind down.
And which politics? American internal politics are foreign and distant to me. How much do you care about my country internal affairs? Probably not much. And it's OK, you can't fix every country in existence, and if you tried to care you would get insane.
While I completely agree in principle, these threads get very very heated so I can kinda see why HN/dang/our reptilian overlords are trying to keep them from becoming a majority of the site (which they easily could be, absent the flagging of these stories).
Also, I totally understand pruning back discussion that is political, and way off the topic of the actual post/story. People should reasonably be able to read and discuss a non-political story without big political discussion springing up.
Thank you! Everytime you interact with government, it is politics. Filing taxes is politics. TurboTax lobbying against free self filing and government filing is politics and technology. It goes on and on. You cannot avoid politics because politics is about people.
It's a privilege that many people working in tech have, who then create and populate forums where discussion of that privilege is considered political and therefore forbidden.
But chatting with absolute strangers about random tech-adjacent topics is an inherently privileged activity. So let's just say the privilege needed to do that is large enough that it also gives you the privilege to not talk about politics.
"My children are starving. Militants have surrounded our village. But let me pop into HN for a bit and drop my hot take on the San Remo Pasta Measurer."
There have been some insane politics (especially "culture war" stuff) that got laundered through the HN "reasonable discussion" filter, especially from 2021 through 2024. They still come up all the time. HN loves talking about politics when the commenters can get critical mass to grind the libertarian or "anti-woke" axe.
Not to mention every leader of YCombinator has had some kind of wild politics that come from having money that separates you from any kind of consequence.
Right now, there are people commenting on HN who built software enabling the wholesale violations of the rights of US citizens.
Right now, there are people commenting on HN who built the systems used at Facebook when they experimented with trying to create "symptoms of depression" in their users by manipulating the feed.
And so on and so forth.
But thank goodness we have dang to shield those people from criticism because ItS sO uNoRiGiNaL.
I don't see much moderation of criticism of meta and their employees behavior. Anti authoritarian politics has always been popular on HN. It's only the byzantine team color politics that is moderated.
I maybe get where you’re coming from, but what’s the solution to the issue you’re proposing? Screening everyone’s resume before allowing them to comment? What about people who work at companies that deal with Palantir at completely different departments (Microsoft and Xbox)? It’s obviously untenable
It is true that some users here spew vile ideology while hiding behind HN intellectual rhetoric. Then posts that understandably react strongly to that get flagged, and users get banned. I wish it was different, but I’ve made peace with that being a significant percent of the user base here.
A particular interaction I had comes to mind. A user here boldly and openly proclaimed he discriminated in interviews against people that look different from him, or that are neurodivergent. Actual illegal behaviour that will get you sued in many countries. I reacted strongly and my post got flagged and I received a comment from the moderation team.
I don’t envy the moderation team though, it’s a tough job.
> A particular interaction I had comes to mind. A user here boldly and openly proclaimed he discriminated in interviews against people that look different from him, or that are neurodivergent. Actual illegal behaviour that will get you sued in many countries. I reacted strongly and my post got flagged and I received a comment from the moderation team.
This is the "moderate discourse" problem, where you can express horrendous opinions as long as you are polite, and anyone who reacts emotionally gets criticized instead. You are required to engage these arguments in a detached, logical way as though they have equal intellectual merit, while they advocate for your suffering. This is also why places that enforce moderate discourse tend to become populated with polite fascists.
> And ppl were worried about China's 1984 style use of Ai, lol.
Came here to say the same...
> In the end it was greedy software developers that enable this.
Nope. First is a failing govt system (not upholding the constitution) that's enabling this.
Second it's not the devs but the business men (that are so much in bed in govt that they have become indistinguishable).
Look, there are software devs (and probably business men) that are equally greedy in, say, Finland/Iceland/etc. But it's not happening there: they simply have a govt that's better for the people at large.
GP didn't say greedy devs caused it, they (we?) are only enabling it.
Obviously there's always the cop out of "someone else would have done it anyway" but it doesn't really change the (un-)ethical side of your choices. I'm not saying it's black and white either - if the other choice is to leave your kids without proper medical care then it's a different thing than just being intentionally blind to ethics.
Worth reminding everyone in the EU and UK that this is not a 'them' problem.
Palantir is the main software vendor for Europol. Equally pretty much all the 1984 proposals for age or id online verification that are being massaged into existence (both in the UK and pushed by the European Commission) have their fingers all over them.
They sell pre-crime and opinion control to our democratic leaders and apparently everyone in Davos loves it.
I am all for criticizing and pointing fingers at trump and this entire administration.
But it does say they have been working with ICE for “years” in the article. What is not really clear to me is was the app made worse recently, was it originally commissioned under trump?
Nothing about that changes that they should not be working with ICE and they deserve any pressure they get to cut ties. But there is some history here I am very curious about.
All of that being said, I am concerned about how this will be turned around and used in more than just ICE and targeting everyone. Especially since we can be sure this will be used in largely blue big cities.
They've definitely using tools like this for a while. It's been true under all administrations, and it's always been a problem. Privacy advocates have been alerting on this for a while.
Physically attacking citizens takes it to another level.
It's one thing for tech companies to be complicit in eroding privacy, it's quite another to be complicit in overt fascism.
Great time to bring up the Imperial Boomerang[1]. My paraphrasing: the weapons and technology that imperial and colonial powers develop or use to control subjugated populations will inevitably be used to also control its own population.
> Approximately 4,000 NYPD officers took part in a protest that included blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and jumping over police barricades in an attempt to rush City Hall.
> The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn.
> Among the hundreds of protesters arrested over the four days of demonstrations in New York City over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only one was highlighted by name by a police union known for its hostility toward Mayor Bill de Blasio. The name of that protester? Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter.
Here's an example. One of my friends works for a manufacturing company. He attended a protest. The next day ICE called his employer and he was informed that if he attended another protest he would be fired. All this b/c he had a small company logo on his jacket.
The ability to en-mass record, lookup and intimidate citizens is unprecedented and while I have no hard proof that this is due to Palantir, it sure smells like it
> “Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets
What constitutes this "high value"? & valuable to who, ICE agents with an itchy trigger finger?
Make no mistake, the immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota are only a training ground for how to undermine civil rights for us all. Everyone is ok targeting te immigrant populations because they are "illegal" or live in a gray area of legality. But eventually these same tools will be used against us.
> Everyone is ok targeting the immigrant populations
To echo another commentor, we're not. And even if we were, this is not how it should be done. Enforcing the laws is one thing, but we have to have due process. Without due process, we have no rights.
Due process for EVERY person in the legal territory regardless of who or what they are. Otherwise it's way to easy to say, "they're the other, and have no rights", and they are already using this line.
Which is absolutely unconstitutional. The constitution says the 4th amendment protects all people, not just citizens. It's been upheld many times by the supreme court. This administration is knowingly and willingly trampling the constitution. The midterm elections can't come soon enough. And in the meantime we all need to get in the streets. Anyone can manipulate social media. But you can't manipulate the narrative when there is an overwhelming number of brave people in the streets clearly and peacefully protesting.
Sorry, bad wording. I was using the "you all" in the same context as the parent's "collective we". Yes, there's tens of thousands out in the streets protesting, but also yes there's tens of millions who aren't.
Current ICE/Homeland Security actions are unambiguously illegal.
The problem is that without an independent congress the US system is able to descend into authoritarianism. The court has (reasonably) decided that on many broad issues regarding presidential actions and abuse of authority only congress (via impeachment and removal) is able to constrain the president.
The current congressional majority has, for now, decided to allow the president to do almost anything he wants, regardless of the law and constitution.
That they neutered themselves doesn't make them any less neutered.
I'm skeptical about their ability to reclaim it, too. Lots of them remember being terrified and running away Jan 6, even if many now pretend not to... and SCOTUS has been on a tear wiping out long-standing legislation Congress was quite clear about like the Voting Rights Act.
I have a hunch most people recognize this, but many are ok with it. I have hope (But not confidence) people will see this in the upcoming US elections and more broadly. This is transparent authoritarian behavior.
Edit: Challenge: If you downvoted the parent post here (It's currently grey), I would love to hear why you think this doesn't match the pattern. Are you living in the US? I in general am struggling to understand my fellow US citizens, given the history of our nation.
I would start with this, because it's a flat out lie
> Everyone is ok targeting te immigrant populations because they are "illegal" or live in a gray area of legality.
People have been complaining about the attack on immigrants for a good, long while. And the complaining has been getting louder, more frequent, and from more people with every day. When they kidnapped workers and suddenly the price of everything went up, there was a lot of "see?!? this is what we're talking about"
So no, "everyone" isn't ok with the targeting of immigrants.
They should have said "enough are ok" instead of "everyone is ok".
Unfortunately, there are still enough people who are fine with the Trump / Miller / Noem / Bovino approach to immigration enforcement, or they're not impacted personally enough to make them speak or act.
I hope the cartoon villain responses coming from the administration when they're challenged on any of this will get more people to stand up against it all.
I expect masked ICE agents to be deployed to polls in purple and blue states to "prevent non-citizens from voting" (i.e. to scare minorities away from polls)
"A pair of armed and masked men in tactical gear stood guard at ballot drop boxes in Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 21 as people began early voting for the 2022 midterm elections."
They might be "off-duty" but this is during Biden's admin. They're immensely more emboldened now and local LE will absolutely not enforce any laws restricting this.
And I'd fully expect some fuckery via executive orders closer to the election, and SCOTUS to use the emergency docket to let them "temporarily" be enforced.
It is being restricted. My red state has gone from allowing mail-in ballots that were allowed if they were postmarked by election day, to requiring them to be in by election day. When the postmaster general is a Trump appointee, and the mail has slowed down over the last few years, it makes me wonder if this is deliberate.
If it is this tweet you are referring to, it's about _teaching_ hate, which is only a slight nuance and still a terrible point to make for a self-labeled "free speech absolutist"
> Teaching people to hate America fundamentally destroys patriotism and the desire to defend our country.
> Such teachings should be viewed as treason and those who do it imprisoned.
And a very difficult thing to define, and very clearly not the sort of thing that'd be enforced against, say, the current President no matter how clear the violation.
Along the same lines, anyone who thinks this is just about immigration should ask themselves what all these tens of thousands of ICE agents are going to do when all the immigrants are finally deported.
Are they just going to go home and go back to their old jobs? Or do you think the Administration is going to find something else for them to do.
Deportations aren’t all that high. The raids are theater.
Thinking that they’re going to deport all the immigrants isn’t realistic or supported by the numbers. Immigration control is a constant ongoing operation in every country. This administration is just making a big show out of it for political points.
My point still stands. The country will obviously not be permanently swarming with ICE agents violently grabbing immigrants off the street. There is going to be mission creep. If this isn't obvious then I don't know what to else I can say to convince you. Immigration is clearly just a pretext to establishing a national police force.
Remember this thread when you hear for the first time that ICE agents are tasked with doing something that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Coming soon.
>Remember this thread when you hear for the first time that ICE agents are tasked with doing something that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Coming soon.
And when it doesn't, will you remember the wild accusations you made or off making others with no accountability?
Hitler's regime didn't start out making death camps for Jews. The initial plan was to deport them, with camps for holding and processing. That was unrealistic given the volume of people to process, which led to the detention and work camps converting to death camps.
Just saying, similar outcomes could occur here. It's happened before. Their goals being unrealistic doesn't mean they'll stop, and may be part of their justification for doing even worse things than they're already doing.
I don't think it is just political points. Illegal Mexican border crossings crashed on the run up to Trump taking presidency. Signaling you'll get captured and deported wherever you are, I'm sure if keeping a lot of people who would be illegal immigrants away.
Palestine was the training ground, now it is being deployed back at home. Turns out it is a small world and you shouldn't have selective empathy.
"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me"
I remember hearing the "imagine if Stasi/Gestapo had the data Facebook and Twitter have on us" argument for years. Turns out they were right to be worried.
Why would you think they wouldn't be right? Even on paper, doesn't that sound like a bad thing?
the past 15 years of my life feels like a bus full of people yelling at the driver to not hit the wall he's speeding towards and he's just ignoring them saying "it will be fine." and here we are!
It's crazy that anybody who has read books could learn about the company "Palantir," know where the name comes from, and join it thinking it's anything other than evil.
The thing is, I know palantir engineers are well paid. Money warps people's brains. It's much easier enable evil if you can go back to a home you own in Silicon Valley.
I've lost count of people who have read Tolkien's work and never dug deeper than "cool fantasy story" level. I was no different when I read the Lord of the Rings as a teenager. Unlike C. S. Lewis, Tolkien does not shove his message down your throat.
We have technofascists trying to bring AI into the military and saying it's Star Trek. Star Trek! One of the most clearly socialist, "woke" tv series! Media literacy is not a conservative value while illiteracy and ignorance is.
No one ever joined palantir thinking they were a good person. You join palantir because you've done enough drugs to believe that "good" and "evil" don't exist and you've "evolved" beyond that. You know, sociopaths.
Per the WSJ, as of January 10th this year, ICE has identified 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles, leaving eight people shot with two confirmed dead. Five of those shot were citizens. According to court records, only one of these civilians was armed and never drew his weapon.
There is a sickness curdling in the dark corners of Silicon Valley. These people need to be humiliated for being the sniveling, authoritarian toads that they are.
There are reports that ICE threw a flash bang into a vehicle last night that contained a father trying to leave with his children to get them to safety.
The govt contract with them should be voided. That's the way.
But in the US no one believes they can meaningfully influence govt for real issues. And they are right.
Sure you can get them to paint a rainbow zebra crossing. /s
But not stop/prevent a (civil) war. Democracy dies and lobbyism (what we call corruption in "modern western democracies" -- because we dont do corruption, that's for poor countries!) takes over when the power is consolidated at a high enough level.
In the meantime, between now and the elections, what is a good method for deterring tech people from working for ICE? They are administering an authoritarian state today.
> Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.
> That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.
I remember in the 2010s when Silicon Valley was full of founders who genuinely wanted to use technology to make the world a better place, and now it's just fascists who want to use technology to kill brown people more efficiently
> Silicon Valley was full of founders who genuinely wanted to use technology to make the world a better place
No, it wasn't, it was full of people who said they wanted to use technology to make the world a better place because saying you would use technology to make the world a better place was viewed as the path to investment and success.
Now, as soon as feigned empathy is no longer required for $$$, the mask comes off. It was never about anything other than profit.
I hate these political posts and those on the wrong side.
Illegal is illegal. Out you go. I don't care.
I'm buying more Palantir stock.
Stay out of our country, and go learing someplace else.
Those that don't agree can leave the country too.
What did the 170 citizens detained in immigration raids last year do that was illegal?
If it was illegal, why were charges either dropped or never filed to begin with for the majority of these cases?
If you are open to understanding why people are so upset, do your mind the favor of reading this high quality reporting on the treatment of US Citizens by ICE
If they were only arresting people not in the country illegally and doing it with constitutionally guaranteed due process then you may have a point. But they aren't. They are arresting, injuring, killing people who are exercising their constitutional rights. ICE has no shred of credibility left. They are not making things safer.
I personally know people in Minneapolis (where I live) who's constitutional rights have been trampled on by ICE. ICE is the enemy, all who support them have blood on their hands.
Every single engineer who works on this should be in prison for life. Nuremberg trials are coming. Be careful associating yourself with techno-fascists, history will not forget what you did.
For an idea as to how this gets translated into the reality on the ground here in Minneapolis this is an article on what’s going on from the main newspaper in the state.
> In the past week alone, ICE boxed in a Woodbury real estate agent recording their movements from his car, slammed him to the ground and detained him at the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling for 10 hours. A 51-year-old teacher patrolling the Nokomis East community told the Star Tribune she was run off the road into a snowbank by ICE for laying on her horn. Officers shattered the car window of a woman attempting to drive past a raid in south Minneapolis to get to a doctor’s appointment nearby, then carried her through the street. Feds pushed an unidentified motorist through a red light into a busy intersection, reportedly fired projectiles at a pedestrian walking “too slowly” in a crosswalk and shoved Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne while he was observing their actions from a public sidewalk.
You can read the full thing here: https://www.startribune.com/have-yall-not-learned-federal-ag...
If all those things happened in Spain where I live, I'm 99% we'd have actual riots on the streets, together with a lot of other unpleasant-but-needed civilian action, until things got better, like we've done in the past (sometimes maybe went slightly overboard with it, but better than nothing).
Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots? How are you not fighting back with more than whistles and blocking them in cars? Is there more stuff actually happening on the ground, but there simply isn't any videos of it, or are people really this passive in the land of the free?
Are people inside the country not getting the same news we're getting on the outside? Are you not witnessing your government carrying out extra-judicial murders and then being protected by that same government? I'm really lost trying to understand how the average person (like you reading this) isn't out on the streets trying to defend what I thought your country was all about.
A pervasive "Someone needs to do something!!!" attitude is why. Americans will forever wait for the school principal to come and get everyone into trouble
>Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots?
Why would I want to riot over immigration enforcement enforcing immigration laws? The immigrants who might be inclined to riot over this are probably trying to not draw attention to themselves.
Is there video for any of that?
If there is proof of it would it change your mind about anything?
Proof is always better. I assume just about everything I hear about politics on the internet is exaggerated until I see evidence at this point.
Serious question: have you tried looking?!
Tons
a few here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634217
Yes
A member of Governor Walz’s staff is the publisher of that newspaper.
Steve Grove has been the CEO and Publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune since April 2023. Prior to that, he served as Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED)—a cabinet-level position—under Governor Walz from 2019 until early 2023. Walz appointed him to that role, and Grove's departure from state government was publicly congratulated by Walz when he transitioned to the newspaper.
> A member of Governor Walz’s staff
> Grove's departure from state government
Pick one!
If you work for Palantir and if you work on these systems: You have blood on your hands. You know that it's not right what is happening on the ground right now. Do something.
The particular problem here is the vast majority of people that are writing this software
1. Don't care, blood is great.
2. Think they are the good guys.
3. Are more worried about their next paycheck and having bad things happen to them related to not paying rent.
Yes, Palantir folks have self selected for the first two over and over - anyone working there for many years now is completely blacklisted from anything I touch, when someone advertises ex-Palantir folks in the job description I know I can safely avoid that company forever.
The unfortunate converse is there are plenty of other software companies looking for that .gov money that would pick these less than scrupulous employees right up.
I would never allow one of them to be hired via any hiring process I have influence over.
> 3. Are more worried about their next paycheck and having bad things happen to them related to not paying rent.
i feel like a broken record: anyone with a resume good enough for Palantir would have no problem finding work for another company/public sector employer. but they stay.
They pay a lot
As would any other job that these devs could get. If you're working at Palantir, it very isn't likely because of of financial desperation.
Guess why
Another arm of the murder cult
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Getting a worker to understand that their work negatively affects innocent people is a big uphill battle.
I'd like to invite you to prove any three of your points.
It’s hard to prove without knowing the app devs, but for points 1 & maybe 2, we can look at whether Americans think the raids are justified.
28% of them think they are [0]. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that the devs would be part of that number
Edit: it looks like the poll it’s for the recent incident of the woman who was shot - my mistake. Then I would assume the number for the raids themselves is higher
[0]: https://x.com/YouGovAmerica/status/2010853750618063016
> JP Doherty did not want to sign the email. But he knew he didn’t have a choice. His son, Rhys, was scheduled to have strabismus surgery in January, correcting an eye issue that made it difficult for him to walk on his own. The procedure cost $10,000 out of pocket. Doherty discussed the decision with his wife, and while she wanted him to be able to quit, they both knew the kids needed his health insurance. [0]
Regarding Musk's "hardcore" ultimatum at Twitter.
[0]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-ultimatum
You don't think most people are motivated by their personal paychecks?
People need paychecks. Not everyone is going to get to build and lead their own businesses?
PLTR stock peaked at $200 last year and has been going back up so far this year. People are investing in CCP style tech and don't care.
A Palantir rep was supporting one of our exercises late last summer, and he said "Knowing what I know about how the military is going all-in on Maven....I recommend buying Palantir stock."
I picked up a few shares, but I haven't checked if Palantir's growth has been unique or part of a general military-industrial complex melt-up.
Free blood money.
Nah, free blood money was when my General Dynamics shares went from $60->$120, then did a stock split and went from $60-> ~$100. I think that was in....2005? The Stryker (a GD product) was coming into service in Iraq, which drove my purchasing decision. I was an E-4 in Korea at the time and thought I was a defense stock-picking genius.
I had to pull out of US stocks/market completely last year after I felt dirty just having money in a country sliding into authoritarianism. Interesting where different people draw different lines :)
Palantir does not work in a vacuum - it requires other technology, platforms and systems to operate and succeed - many of which are designed and maintained by the users of Hacker News.
Take a look at Palantir's trust center: https://palantir.safebase.us
Schellman did their audit and compliance - do they have blood on their hands?
How about AWS, GCP, Azure cloud resources used by Palantir - are they stained, too?
Certainly you must be aware that there are not just binary values of morality in life. The obvious answer is yes they are stained, as we all are through our participation in various systems, but with vastly varying amounts.
Is the manufacturer of the bomb responsible for when Israel drops it on a family home in Gaza? Yes. Is it the same responsibility as the general who gave the order? No. Is it the same as the pilot who followed the order? No.
Does that make it useless to hold people accountable? Of course not.
Respectfully, this is cheap cope. The bomb maker didn't know when he made the bomb, maybe. Now he knows, as do all the people turning the gears on this meat grinder, including a bunch of people here.
If you value your comfy life over the well being of others and the future of not only the country, but without an ounce of hyperbole, the human race, then keep your head down. If you don't, fuckin DO SOMETHING.
You know all those times you've said or heard others say "well if I was in Germany in the 30's...." well, guess what, games fuckin real now. So act like the person you want to be.
Palantir is built explicitly for surveillance, in a way the other companies you listed are not. There is no comparison here. It's like saying the City of Minneapolis is complicit because they maintain the roads ICE is driving on.
The ironworker making steel plates for tanks and ships has a hell of a lot less moral culpability than the engineer designing shells.
> If you work in technology, you are part of this force, whether you like it or not.
Disappointing to see you downvoted. I agree with this partially, but only because I think it applies more broadly.
I work in tech (although not in Big Tech/Mag 7/FAANG/whatever they're called now), and I feel quite acutely that anyone in the field is culpable in part for the enabling the absolutely massive dump that the capital-adjacent class is taking on the world to have their power play fantasies play out.
To the extent that I've started apologising on behalf of the field/profession to non-technical folks when they complain about yet another dark pattern/"growth hack" designed to steal their attention and money.
Yes, they all are. Profits and shareholders value trump anything else. So yes, they are accomplices in the destruction of American democracy.
You can’t minimize the damage Palantir is doing with simple whataboutism.
It is in fact the contrary: I am trying to maximize it by pointing out how big tech platforms makes it possible.
No you literally went the what about route.
The US gov (including ICE) uses all of Microsoft Office for coordination and planning: email, spreadsheets, powerpoint, document generation, etc. Would you say Microsoft employees have blood on their hands too? If not, what makes Microsoft different?
From the article for context:
> Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address
So essentially, the relevant app here is custom built in order to help ICE raids.
That's substantially different from generic office tech where ICE happen to be one of millions of users.
Taking your argument in good faith: I think selling a tool with a narrow use case tailor-made for ICE is categorically different.
The same difference between a kitchen knife and an AK 47
Considering that Microsoft is also providing services to the Israeli government with the explicit intent of storing and cataloging all of the phone calls made by Palestinian citizens so that they can be analyzed by AI for potential bombing targets...yes I would say Microsoft also has blood on their hands. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they have deep partnerships with Palantir for compute services.
Office can be used for things that aren't objectively evil?
All things done with office must be evil by association.
(Except clippy, he's just a guy)
Maybe, but Office is evil itself.
Yes, absolutely. These are criminal scum, on par with pedos. Just look at how they are helping a people getting wiped out from their own territory in the Middle East.
Whataboutism, much?
Meh, I blame social media specifically and media generally for the state of our country. Why call out just Palantir. The US, maybe the world, would be better off if companies like Meta (and others) didn't exist....
I assume if someone works for Palantir they're an unabashed Yarvinist and fine with it.
That's a pretty broad generalization, but OK I'll bite.
- I think Yarvin has a lot of good points. No one should be ashamed to admit the truth of a matter. I can't stand his voice, I think he has annoying mannerisms, but nonetheless the man has a point and I'm not ashamed (especially by unknown and strange online personas) to say so.
- Palantir is objectively a profitable job. I've learned a lot here and the people I work with are brilliant.
- I don't think I have "blood on my hands" and rather instead think that people who use that tactic are resorting to strange emotional manipulation in place of a salient argument.
Let's be honest, simply conjecturing that someone ascribes to a political view isn't discourse. It's a potshot. You're assuming that anyone who reads your comment and leans in your direction is going to agree and vote with you. This is literally the lowest and cheapest form of engagement. It's also the most self serving. It does nothing to advance the conversation or prove your point.
Most importantly, this is the exact type of behavior that is furthering political polarization and discouraging actual discourse.
Really shows the state of things right now tbh.
I'm vouching for this comment (even though I disagree with it) as it's important to hear dissenting views.
Can you elaborate on some of Yarvin's points you think are good?
https://x.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744
Hopefully John Connor is one of them. Deeply embedded, slowly implanting backdoors and kill switches into the Skynet system they are building.
Wouldn’t it be even more fair to say that the people who allowed or even encouraged illegal immigration have blood on their hands because they know what they were doing and how the government would have to respond under the law? If we are going to use the line of reasoning you suggest then this should easily be on the table also.
This rests on the assumption that the government has to respond with violence.
In general, if you're working for Palantir, you're unlikely to find yourself in the right side of history. Whenever you hear of tech being used for questionable purposes, Palantir seems to have their fingers deep in the pie.
The Palantro CEO, Alex Karp, is on the record that he approves of what the president is doing in regards to immigration enforcement and the striking of boats in international waters.
"The Palantir CEO is currently the 142nd richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $18.2 billion..."
https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/alex-karp...
Terrorizing everyone indiscriminately is not immigration enforcement.
900 million in federal contracts this year will do that
This type of behaviour from Palantir is old news: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
And in 2016 he was a Clinton supporter and a self described progressive. Vance was also a never trumper by his own admission.
It’s quite clear to me that these elites are just grabbing power by any means necessary. It won’t end after Trump. He’s just providing the cover in the current moment.
When the transition to authoritarianism starts elites have a choice to make.
History show most will choose authoritarianism.
Larry Ellison wants constant surveillance so everyone will be 'on their best behavior'.
With a little asterisk on the word "everyone".
Some animals are more equal than others after all.
I'm not sure why the down votes, I'm not being glib.
Go read the work of historians who study this. The transitions in Russia, Hungary, etc are well documented. There is a pretty solid consensus understanding of the dynamics, the typical playbook, etc.
Why would he object to illegal acts by the US when they are so profitable.
We need to expect more from our business leaders.
They have more power than you. The only way to induce accountability is to reduce the power gap.
These people want lords who they can petition for charity
Palantir would be evil even if Karp was, like, woke or something.
i don't think we can expect that. but we should demand, require and enforce it.
I've been on the receiving end of federal enforcement (DOJ, high-profile "cybercrime"). When they want you, they don't need a confidence score. There is no quota—they take time to build a case. The existence of these tools tells you this isn't targeted enforcement, it's industrial-scale population processing dressed up in an algorithm.
I live in Minnesota. This is my backyard.
And ppl were worried about China's 1984 style use of Ai, lol. In the end it was greedy software developers that enable this.
Take the word "immigrant" out of the article and replace it with "citizen". Thats the end goal here, trace, track, monitor, control citizens. First they have to pursuade the U.S. citizens to accept this surveillance, thus they create these psyops based on "illegal immigrants" causing "havoc" to stir up anger and emotions in U.S. citizens in order for them to be on board with the raids, "arrests", surveillance, etc. Now, on another note is the darker side hidden in plain sight, produced by Homeland, cia, fbi and Freemasons, is the fact that they are creating these psyops and put their favorite Freemasonic number in every one, 33. 33 being the highest order one can get being a Freemason. If you look at the fake shooting of a character called Ren33 Good, youll see the 33 everywhere. The address was 33 east portland in Minneapolis, the 3300 block, then you have the double Portland Oregon ICE fake shootimg in which a fake "victim" was 33yrs old. Also the state of Oregon is the 33rd state...They link these together in your face but hidden. Also photo of agent in minneapolis of "police" with 33 on door. Oh and the fake renee good was "shot" 3 times. Now, also in a press conference, Jd Vance said the ice officer who "shot" ren33 good was dragged by a car months before and got 33 stiches... its all their theatrical movie productions in line with the news medias. Its like hackers creating fake websites, which people think are their banks etc...based on what seen on screen. This is not one time either, the 33 is in all of them, onè of the most promiment fake shootings was Tennesee trans school fake "shooting" Look into the 33s om that one, too much to list here.
This is what happens when one allows oneself to hide in "safe spaces" (like HN) where there's a "no politics" rule enabling people to hide and avoid being confronted with the ramifications of their actions.
The entire world runs on technology now. It's all inherently political.
This exactly hits in on the head. You're trying create a forum absent of politics. In fact, you're just enabling one political view over another. This hides social issues and in the end comes back to undermine your pure "technical view". It's not apolitical, it's disassociation from reality.
HN isn't even absent of politics, just the front page is really.
Everything we do is political. When we are making software and publishing it, whether or a company or ourselves, for sale or for free, there are political implications to those actions.
Exactly. Declaring that there must be no discussion when confronted with situations in which one party is doing harm to others, is an implicit endorsement of the harms being perpetuated.
Thank you all in this thread! I couldn't have put it better. I cannot stand "no politics rules". Politics divides and it is personal. But it shouldn't be either of those. We should be attacking policy and not people. No politics rules just deny reality because software doesn't exist in a vacuum without policy and money. Heck most people want to use software to get money which is a product of policy.
I'm going to defend the HN "no politics" rule here.
The reason "no politics" zones exist is because there are enough people going out of their way to shout at everybody, everywhere, in every corner of the internet and enough people are tired of it that they flock to...no politics zones. In real life, a person like that confronts you...you remove yourself from the situation, because that person who can't stop shouting at everybody comes across as nuts.
I was going to remove myself from this conversation, but then I had to shout it out, so.
I think what op is getting at is that "no politics" rule is what allowed the frog to boil. So banning political discussion is political in and of itself.
I'd agree with your no politics preference if we were in a functioning society that wasn't actively spiralling towards fascism. I recognize that this line is blurry, and that's exactly the reason why no politics zones exist, there is always someone yelling about fascism. He might be a crazy guy on the corner who yells about everything.
I think the difference here is that there is a big critical mass of people who have recognized that the pillars on which our country sit are being actively sabotaged. It's not that everyone wants to be talking about politics all of a sudden, it's that the frog is finally boiling.
You can see in this threat that confronting people with the ramifications of their actions causes them to double down. They'll just come up with more and more justifications of why the victims deserve it. Same as every mass atrocity.
I don't think you can really blame HN specifically here. It's much wider than that; pretty much the tech industry as a whole actively discourages any kind of philosophical reflection on technology, at least the kind that says you shouldn't build something, even if it's profitable.
That is a fair take. Everybody wants to say "it is just a tool" and get away with it
Yes, HN is my safe space. I have enough politics in my daily life, I don't need it when I'm with phone in my bed trying to wind down.
And which politics? American internal politics are foreign and distant to me. How much do you care about my country internal affairs? Probably not much. And it's OK, you can't fix every country in existence, and if you tried to care you would get insane.
Pro-tip: when you see a headline on the main page, you don't have to click on it. Just keep scrolling.
While I completely agree in principle, these threads get very very heated so I can kinda see why HN/dang/our reptilian overlords are trying to keep them from becoming a majority of the site (which they easily could be, absent the flagging of these stories).
Sure, within reason.
Also, I totally understand pruning back discussion that is political, and way off the topic of the actual post/story. People should reasonably be able to read and discuss a non-political story without big political discussion springing up.
It’s no longer politics when they’re abducting and murdering your neighbors.
>"no politics"
No politics is a privilege that many do not have.
Thank you! Everytime you interact with government, it is politics. Filing taxes is politics. TurboTax lobbying against free self filing and government filing is politics and technology. It goes on and on. You cannot avoid politics because politics is about people.
It's a privilege that many people working in tech have, who then create and populate forums where discussion of that privilege is considered political and therefore forbidden.
Exactly my point
But chatting with absolute strangers about random tech-adjacent topics is an inherently privileged activity. So let's just say the privilege needed to do that is large enough that it also gives you the privilege to not talk about politics.
"My children are starving. Militants have surrounded our village. But let me pop into HN for a bit and drop my hot take on the San Remo Pasta Measurer."
There’s a shockingly large amount of the population that doesn’t want politics period. And that’s how we got here.
Yup!
There have been some insane politics (especially "culture war" stuff) that got laundered through the HN "reasonable discussion" filter, especially from 2021 through 2024. They still come up all the time. HN loves talking about politics when the commenters can get critical mass to grind the libertarian or "anti-woke" axe.
Not to mention every leader of YCombinator has had some kind of wild politics that come from having money that separates you from any kind of consequence.
Accounts have literally been praising the Iran islamist government in the thread on that country's internet shutdown.
It all depends on if you have the right politics or not. (USA bad, West bad, EU bad, China good, Iran good, Commies good)
HN is cancer. @dang himself is a complicit piece of shit.
In reality HN's 'no politics' ends up meaning no unoriginal tribal politics. Which is actually refreshing.
Think about this:
Right now, there are people commenting on HN who built software enabling the wholesale violations of the rights of US citizens.
Right now, there are people commenting on HN who built the systems used at Facebook when they experimented with trying to create "symptoms of depression" in their users by manipulating the feed.
And so on and so forth.
But thank goodness we have dang to shield those people from criticism because ItS sO uNoRiGiNaL.
I don't see much moderation of criticism of meta and their employees behavior. Anti authoritarian politics has always been popular on HN. It's only the byzantine team color politics that is moderated.
I maybe get where you’re coming from, but what’s the solution to the issue you’re proposing? Screening everyone’s resume before allowing them to comment? What about people who work at companies that deal with Palantir at completely different departments (Microsoft and Xbox)? It’s obviously untenable
It is true that some users here spew vile ideology while hiding behind HN intellectual rhetoric. Then posts that understandably react strongly to that get flagged, and users get banned. I wish it was different, but I’ve made peace with that being a significant percent of the user base here.
A particular interaction I had comes to mind. A user here boldly and openly proclaimed he discriminated in interviews against people that look different from him, or that are neurodivergent. Actual illegal behaviour that will get you sued in many countries. I reacted strongly and my post got flagged and I received a comment from the moderation team.
I don’t envy the moderation team though, it’s a tough job.
> A particular interaction I had comes to mind. A user here boldly and openly proclaimed he discriminated in interviews against people that look different from him, or that are neurodivergent. Actual illegal behaviour that will get you sued in many countries. I reacted strongly and my post got flagged and I received a comment from the moderation team.
This is the "moderate discourse" problem, where you can express horrendous opinions as long as you are polite, and anyone who reacts emotionally gets criticized instead. You are required to engage these arguments in a detached, logical way as though they have equal intellectual merit, while they advocate for your suffering. This is also why places that enforce moderate discourse tend to become populated with polite fascists.
> I reacted strongly and my post got flagged and I received a comment from the moderation team.
Yes the moderators here are 100% part of the problem.
>I maybe get where you’re coming from, but what’s the solution to the issue you’re proposing?
Making those people into pariahs, through repeated public shaming, until they stop being wilfully blind to the harms they're perpetuating.
I am 100% serious.
To be clear, I was talking about screening where people work. That part is untenable. And I think large parts of the community would reject it.
> And ppl were worried about China's 1984 style use of Ai, lol.
Came here to say the same...
> In the end it was greedy software developers that enable this.
Nope. First is a failing govt system (not upholding the constitution) that's enabling this.
Second it's not the devs but the business men (that are so much in bed in govt that they have become indistinguishable).
Look, there are software devs (and probably business men) that are equally greedy in, say, Finland/Iceland/etc. But it's not happening there: they simply have a govt that's better for the people at large.
GP didn't say greedy devs caused it, they (we?) are only enabling it.
Obviously there's always the cop out of "someone else would have done it anyway" but it doesn't really change the (un-)ethical side of your choices. I'm not saying it's black and white either - if the other choice is to leave your kids without proper medical care then it's a different thing than just being intentionally blind to ethics.
Worth reminding everyone in the EU and UK that this is not a 'them' problem.
Palantir is the main software vendor for Europol. Equally pretty much all the 1984 proposals for age or id online verification that are being massaged into existence (both in the UK and pushed by the European Commission) have their fingers all over them.
They sell pre-crime and opinion control to our democratic leaders and apparently everyone in Davos loves it.
I am all for criticizing and pointing fingers at trump and this entire administration.
But it does say they have been working with ICE for “years” in the article. What is not really clear to me is was the app made worse recently, was it originally commissioned under trump?
Nothing about that changes that they should not be working with ICE and they deserve any pressure they get to cut ties. But there is some history here I am very curious about.
All of that being said, I am concerned about how this will be turned around and used in more than just ICE and targeting everyone. Especially since we can be sure this will be used in largely blue big cities.
It was a boring database product in 2011. It expanded in scope over many years, and now has a much larger budget.
"That changed in the second Trump administration, with Palantir now working on ICE’s deportation efforts."
https://www.palantir.com/newsroom/press-releases/homeland-se...
"...Since 2011, Palantir has partnered with HSI"
"I am all for criticizing and pointing fingers at trump and this entire administration"
I don't believe you or you wouldn't have bothered to muddy the water in the face of repeated violence and dehumanization.
They've definitely using tools like this for a while. It's been true under all administrations, and it's always been a problem. Privacy advocates have been alerting on this for a while.
Physically attacking citizens takes it to another level.
It's one thing for tech companies to be complicit in eroding privacy, it's quite another to be complicit in overt fascism.
ICE is already targeting everyone.
Great time to bring up the Imperial Boomerang[1]. My paraphrasing: the weapons and technology that imperial and colonial powers develop or use to control subjugated populations will inevitably be used to also control its own population.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
As always, I like to point out that someone here is probably very proud of their work on this.
And, if you criticize them for building these systems, they'll trot out the usual excuses:
- Well, I'm working on interesting technical problems at massive scale. Leave it to the business guys to figure out how to apply it--not my problem.
- Well, I just move protobufs from one middleware API to another. I don't even talk to the application guys.
- Well, I just write the code my boss tells me to write. I don't want to be fired!
I keep thinking about https://neveragain.tech
Law and order and bureaucracy is a seductive, all encompassing, crushing force.
3 people from Palantir on that list of signatories
Anyone who works for Palantir or this corrupt administration should be blacklisted from the industry
Blue cities should have local citizen backed militias under the control of the mayor.
How would that be different from current municipal police forces?
The "under the control of the mayor" bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrolmen%27s_Benevolent_Assoc...
> Approximately 4,000 NYPD officers took part in a protest that included blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and jumping over police barricades in an attempt to rush City Hall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_San_Francisco_P...
> The ACLU obtained a court order prohibiting strikers from carrying their service revolvers. Again, the SFPD ignored the court order. On August 20, a bomb detonated at the Mayor's home with a sign reading "Don't Threaten Us" left on his lawn.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/nyregion/chiara-de-blasio...
> Among the hundreds of protesters arrested over the four days of demonstrations in New York City over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only one was highlighted by name by a police union known for its hostility toward Mayor Bill de Blasio. The name of that protester? Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter.
The national guard exists for this purpose (state level) but is mostly captured by federal interests.
Local PD's could in effect do something similar but have shown to back the authoritarian-aligned party.
Propaganda has aligned nearly every single level of law enforcement to authoritarianism. I can't see a scenario where this is undone.
https://archive.ph/9UPzF
Can anyone explain a user flow for how a Palantir product enables ICE to go from app launch to ‘target arrested’?
Here's an example. One of my friends works for a manufacturing company. He attended a protest. The next day ICE called his employer and he was informed that if he attended another protest he would be fired. All this b/c he had a small company logo on his jacket.
The ability to en-mass record, lookup and intimidate citizens is unprecedented and while I have no hard proof that this is due to Palantir, it sure smells like it
> confidence score
Is this the new social credit?
> “Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets
What constitutes this "high value"? & valuable to who, ICE agents with an itchy trigger finger?
> What constitutes this "high value"?
It's pretty simple[1].
1: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/family-guy-skin-color-chart
It's not really a good ad for their software as they appear to be grabbing brown skinned people at random.
Appears based on what? What percentage of detainees do you think are illegal vs legal residents?
Why is this allowed to reach the front page, but any technical talk relating to the slaughter of Iranians gets quietly removed?
It's possible that different people flag the discussions you're referring to. That said, it looks like there have been ~7 threads with over 100 points on Iran in the last week alone: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
If anything, it appears that Minnesota/Minneapolis are under-discussed relative to Iran, no?
Good question. But a lazy parsing of your comment might imply you want this post also flagged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
Wasn't there a meme called owl really?
Make no mistake, the immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota are only a training ground for how to undermine civil rights for us all. Everyone is ok targeting te immigrant populations because they are "illegal" or live in a gray area of legality. But eventually these same tools will be used against us.
> Everyone is ok targeting the immigrant populations
To echo another commentor, we're not. And even if we were, this is not how it should be done. Enforcing the laws is one thing, but we have to have due process. Without due process, we have no rights.
Due process for EVERY person in the legal territory regardless of who or what they are. Otherwise it's way to easy to say, "they're the other, and have no rights", and they are already using this line.
Which is absolutely unconstitutional. The constitution says the 4th amendment protects all people, not just citizens. It's been upheld many times by the supreme court. This administration is knowingly and willingly trampling the constitution. The midterm elections can't come soon enough. And in the meantime we all need to get in the streets. Anyone can manipulate social media. But you can't manipulate the narrative when there is an overwhelming number of brave people in the streets clearly and peacefully protesting.
> Everyone is ok targeting te immigrant populations
No, we're not.
I think the GP means the collective "we" is OK with it, evidenced simply by the fact that it is happening.
Yep, and from the outside, the rest of the world is watching you all just let it happen.
How can you watch the protest and organization in MN and conclude people are "just letting it happen". Quite the opposite.
Sorry, bad wording. I was using the "you all" in the same context as the parent's "collective we". Yes, there's tens of thousands out in the streets protesting, but also yes there's tens of millions who aren't.
A lot of the world would not tolerate the amount of illegals that the US has within its borders.
then vote for open borders
as long as there are borders, illegals shall be removed
Then argue for democratically changing the law to make them unambiguously legal.
Selectively enforcing only the laws you want to is the key enabler of corruption.
> Selectively enforcing only the laws you want to is the key enabler of corruption.
Like expanding Presidential immunity specifically for a President with 34 existing felony convictions?
Or the admin refusing to even investigate the agent in the Good shooting (https://www.axios.com/2026/01/14/ice-trump-minneapolis-inves...) while going after her widow (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/prosecutors-doj-resign...)?
Current ICE/Homeland Security actions are unambiguously illegal.
The problem is that without an independent congress the US system is able to descend into authoritarianism. The court has (reasonably) decided that on many broad issues regarding presidential actions and abuse of authority only congress (via impeachment and removal) is able to constrain the president.
The current congressional majority has, for now, decided to allow the president to do almost anything he wants, regardless of the law and constitution.
> Selectively enforcing only the laws you want to is the key enabler of corruption.
That's what the OP is saying.
Congress has been neutered and there's been efforts to ensure that it stays that way.
Congress hasn't been neutered, they can reclaim their power at any time. Republicans in power simply refuse to act at all.
That they neutered themselves doesn't make them any less neutered.
I'm skeptical about their ability to reclaim it, too. Lots of them remember being terrified and running away Jan 6, even if many now pretend not to... and SCOTUS has been on a tear wiping out long-standing legislation Congress was quite clear about like the Voting Rights Act.
It’s the literal plot of Star Wars
It isn’t new though. The whole reason it is such a mess now is it was equally deliberately ignored for decades.
I have a hunch most people recognize this, but many are ok with it. I have hope (But not confidence) people will see this in the upcoming US elections and more broadly. This is transparent authoritarian behavior.
Edit: Challenge: If you downvoted the parent post here (It's currently grey), I would love to hear why you think this doesn't match the pattern. Are you living in the US? I in general am struggling to understand my fellow US citizens, given the history of our nation.
I would start with this, because it's a flat out lie
> Everyone is ok targeting te immigrant populations because they are "illegal" or live in a gray area of legality.
People have been complaining about the attack on immigrants for a good, long while. And the complaining has been getting louder, more frequent, and from more people with every day. When they kidnapped workers and suddenly the price of everything went up, there was a lot of "see?!? this is what we're talking about"
So no, "everyone" isn't ok with the targeting of immigrants.
They should have said "enough are ok" instead of "everyone is ok".
Unfortunately, there are still enough people who are fine with the Trump / Miller / Noem / Bovino approach to immigration enforcement, or they're not impacted personally enough to make them speak or act.
I hope the cartoon villain responses coming from the administration when they're challenged on any of this will get more people to stand up against it all.
I expect masked ICE agents to be deployed to polls in purple and blue states to "prevent non-citizens from voting" (i.e. to scare minorities away from polls)
Bet. Lets see if we can get this up on polymarket, bet on it.
You already lost your own bet.
"A pair of armed and masked men in tactical gear stood guard at ballot drop boxes in Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 21 as people began early voting for the 2022 midterm elections."
They might be "off-duty" but this is during Biden's admin. They're immensely more emboldened now and local LE will absolutely not enforce any laws restricting this.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/06/election-officials-facing-ar...
So the goal post moved from ICE or Federal agents being stationed at polling stations to any individual at all?
> deployed to polls in purple and blue states to "prevent non-citizens from voting" (i.e. to scare minorities away from polls)
MOST states (purple, blue, red) have mail-in voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_St...
They're working on that.
Challenging the rules: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-revives-...
Changing the rules at USPS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-this-new-mail-rule-c...
And I'd fully expect some fuckery via executive orders closer to the election, and SCOTUS to use the emergency docket to let them "temporarily" be enforced.
Correct, which the administration is also trying to remove.
For now. The tyrant controls the post office.
They're targeting that too. e.g. recent change to postmark dates.
It is being restricted. My red state has gone from allowing mail-in ballots that were allowed if they were postmarked by election day, to requiring them to be in by election day. When the postmaster general is a Trump appointee, and the mail has slowed down over the last few years, it makes me wonder if this is deliberate.
Musk tweeted yesterday that speaking hate against the country should be considered treason and lead to being locked-up.
It's not hard to shift "anti-American" speech to mean "anti-ICE", anti-current-administration, etc.
He should be allowed to say that.
But it should not be enforced, or the constitution became toilet paper. I think we are arriving at the latter.
Mr "free speech" Musk (/s)
If it is this tweet you are referring to, it's about _teaching_ hate, which is only a slight nuance and still a terrible point to make for a self-labeled "free speech absolutist"
> Teaching people to hate America fundamentally destroys patriotism and the desire to defend our country.
> Such teachings should be viewed as treason and those who do it imprisoned.
https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2011519593492402617#m
> it's about _teaching_ hate
Which is free speech, unfortunately.
And a very difficult thing to define, and very clearly not the sort of thing that'd be enforced against, say, the current President no matter how clear the violation.
Along the same lines, anyone who thinks this is just about immigration should ask themselves what all these tens of thousands of ICE agents are going to do when all the immigrants are finally deported.
Are they just going to go home and go back to their old jobs? Or do you think the Administration is going to find something else for them to do.
Deportations aren’t all that high. The raids are theater.
Thinking that they’re going to deport all the immigrants isn’t realistic or supported by the numbers. Immigration control is a constant ongoing operation in every country. This administration is just making a big show out of it for political points.
My point still stands. The country will obviously not be permanently swarming with ICE agents violently grabbing immigrants off the street. There is going to be mission creep. If this isn't obvious then I don't know what to else I can say to convince you. Immigration is clearly just a pretext to establishing a national police force.
Remember this thread when you hear for the first time that ICE agents are tasked with doing something that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Coming soon.
It looked like your jeans might be knock-offs. Customs violation. Time to flashbang your kids.
>Remember this thread when you hear for the first time that ICE agents are tasked with doing something that has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Coming soon.
And when it doesn't, will you remember the wild accusations you made or off making others with no accountability?
Hitler's regime didn't start out making death camps for Jews. The initial plan was to deport them, with camps for holding and processing. That was unrealistic given the volume of people to process, which led to the detention and work camps converting to death camps.
This is relevant to mention because the number of people in ICE detention right now is spiking: https://tracreports.org/immigration/quickfacts/detention.htm...
Just saying, similar outcomes could occur here. It's happened before. Their goals being unrealistic doesn't mean they'll stop, and may be part of their justification for doing even worse things than they're already doing.
I don't think it is just political points. Illegal Mexican border crossings crashed on the run up to Trump taking presidency. Signaling you'll get captured and deported wherever you are, I'm sure if keeping a lot of people who would be illegal immigrants away.
They might "look for immigrants" near polling stations in November?
Would be very bad if "immigrants" (i.e. not wearing a fair face with a matching MAGA hat) could vote, amirite?
They could monitor the midterm elections /s
Citation needed.
Palestine was the training ground, now it is being deployed back at home. Turns out it is a small world and you shouldn't have selective empathy.
"First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me"
Mods are going to boot this off the front page.
Mostly flagging from individual pro-ICE HN accounts.
I remember hearing the "imagine if Stasi/Gestapo had the data Facebook and Twitter have on us" argument for years. Turns out they were right to be worried.
Why would you think they wouldn't be right? Even on paper, doesn't that sound like a bad thing?
the past 15 years of my life feels like a bus full of people yelling at the driver to not hit the wall he's speeding towards and he's just ignoring them saying "it will be fine." and here we are!
It's crazy that anybody who has read books could learn about the company "Palantir," know where the name comes from, and join it thinking it's anything other than evil.
The thing is, I know palantir engineers are well paid. Money warps people's brains. It's much easier enable evil if you can go back to a home you own in Silicon Valley.
> know where the name comes from
This is a wild point to me, yeah.
The Palantir is literally a cautionary tale on the risks of thinking you can use the enemy's tools without being corrupted by it.
I've lost count of people who have read Tolkien's work and never dug deeper than "cool fantasy story" level. I was no different when I read the Lord of the Rings as a teenager. Unlike C. S. Lewis, Tolkien does not shove his message down your throat.
We have technofascists trying to bring AI into the military and saying it's Star Trek. Star Trek! One of the most clearly socialist, "woke" tv series! Media literacy is not a conservative value while illiteracy and ignorance is.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/01/pentagons-arsenal-of...
I think they know exactly what they were doing with the naming. They were and are absolutely ok with the evil connotations and uses
No one ever joined palantir thinking they were a good person. You join palantir because you've done enough drugs to believe that "good" and "evil" don't exist and you've "evolved" beyond that. You know, sociopaths.
Silicon Valley started with hippies and will end with fascists.
Per the WSJ, as of January 10th this year, ICE has identified 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles, leaving eight people shot with two confirmed dead. Five of those shot were citizens. According to court records, only one of these civilians was armed and never drew his weapon.
There is a sickness curdling in the dark corners of Silicon Valley. These people need to be humiliated for being the sniveling, authoritarian toads that they are.
There are reports that ICE threw a flash bang into a vehicle last night that contained a father trying to leave with his children to get them to safety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbMO7u44LGM
"humiliating" folks might not be the proportional response when innocent people are dying
How else are we supposed to deter tech people from working for Palantir? What is a good polite method?
The govt contract with them should be voided. That's the way.
But in the US no one believes they can meaningfully influence govt for real issues. And they are right.
Sure you can get them to paint a rainbow zebra crossing. /s
But not stop/prevent a (civil) war. Democracy dies and lobbyism (what we call corruption in "modern western democracies" -- because we dont do corruption, that's for poor countries!) takes over when the power is consolidated at a high enough level.
In the meantime, between now and the elections, what is a good method for deterring tech people from working for ICE? They are administering an authoritarian state today.
people cannot yet be held accountable; this is an important first step, however.
Ah ok, we'll hold people accountable. Sweet!
Hopefully the number of people who die stays low until that happens, which always happens, at least.
I don't know how much people outside of MN know about what's going on, but it's fucking dire here. However bad you think it is, it's worse.
There are more Feds running around then state and local police
As bad as Chicago?
Here's a recent write-up by a local: https://wburdine.substack.com/p/letter-from-an-occupied-minn...
Much worse
Is there any reason to work for Palantir if you aren't a fascist?
Most of the people in the Trump administration are not ideological. They are grifters, in it for money and status.
Palantir is probably similar
I'm not sure saying "I don't care if we do fascism as long as it makes me money" is any more morally defensible.
But, I hope, it does point to a weakness, for now.
> Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.
> That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.
I remember in the 2010s when Silicon Valley was full of founders who genuinely wanted to use technology to make the world a better place, and now it's just fascists who want to use technology to kill brown people more efficiently
> Silicon Valley was full of founders who genuinely wanted to use technology to make the world a better place
No, it wasn't, it was full of people who said they wanted to use technology to make the world a better place because saying you would use technology to make the world a better place was viewed as the path to investment and success.
Now, as soon as feigned empathy is no longer required for $$$, the mask comes off. It was never about anything other than profit.
Correct! The reason so many Silicon Valley types love Trump is they can finally stop pretending to care about people.
And yet their base ate up the claim that DOGE was about getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse.
Frick Trump and frick all the pieces of dump that vote red! I hope you and all your loved ones de a horrible deth. You are ruining the entire world!
Why am I being downvoted? Has HN been invaded by Trump's scum too?
I hate these political posts and those on the wrong side. Illegal is illegal. Out you go. I don't care. I'm buying more Palantir stock. Stay out of our country, and go learing someplace else. Those that don't agree can leave the country too.
What did the 170 citizens detained in immigration raids last year do that was illegal?
If it was illegal, why were charges either dropped or never filed to begin with for the majority of these cases?
If you are open to understanding why people are so upset, do your mind the favor of reading this high quality reporting on the treatment of US Citizens by ICE
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
If they were only arresting people not in the country illegally and doing it with constitutionally guaranteed due process then you may have a point. But they aren't. They are arresting, injuring, killing people who are exercising their constitutional rights. ICE has no shred of credibility left. They are not making things safer.
I personally know people in Minneapolis (where I live) who's constitutional rights have been trampled on by ICE. ICE is the enemy, all who support them have blood on their hands.
Every single engineer who works on this should be in prison for life. Nuremberg trials are coming. Be careful associating yourself with techno-fascists, history will not forget what you did.