No we can't. In the early 2000s we desperately tried to get our governments to be less dependent on Microsoft and we completely failed. Europe is not a federation like the US, worse many of the countries in Europe themselves are governed much like federations. We are easy prey for big American corporations. It's easy for Palantir to sell their product and then a thousand little government organizations will claim there simply is no alternative at the same quality level.
> In the early 2000s we desperately tried to get our governments to be less dependent on Microsoft and we completely failed
You didn't have the great unifying dislike of the orange man as a motivating factor then. Now you do and I would wager there is significant public support behind getting away from reliance on the US.
Perhaps, but one would think those aren't the prime issues meriting first mention. I went in hoping for details of what Palantir is doing wrong _in Europe_, but all I got was some rallying the base cliches.
It's a European issue because we look to the US and now appreciate more than ever the need to introduce barriers to stop temporary fascist governments doing the same permanent damage they have done in the US. Our democratic systems are just as vulnerable to populist leaders taking power. One of those barriers we must erect is the elimination of corporation with unfettered access to institutional data that can be used by fascist governments to maintain or grow their power base.
Believe it or not, it's possible for more than one person or entity to do something. I know, it's really incredible to think about! John and Bill can both scam Elizabeth, even though they live in different countries!
But apparently I can't complain because they're both criminals and I can only complain about one! It says in the rulebook!
So... what exactly is your argument here? The children of a man who is convicted and sent to prison should also go to prison, so as to avoid separation? Or that we just don't send men to prison if they have children?
Not before handing over an enormous cache of NHS patient data to them during the pandemic. If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute.
If memory serves, this was not kept on NHS hardware or even NHS controlled compute.
Does anyone have a verifiable source for that? It would be extremely controversial if true and even among the big civil liberties and privacy advocacy groups in the UK I have never seen anyone make that claim.
The defence to using Palantir by British government departments and public services has typically been that Palantir only provides the technology and the data itself is still held and processed in the UK under the native organisation's control. Even this is still controversial because of issues like the CLOUD Act and the general reputation of Palantir.
But that is a long way from allowing the mass export of sensitive personal data to a US firm without the data subjects' knowledge or consent. That looks just plain illegal under our existing data protection legislation. Green lighting it - even in the panic phase during COVID - would probably be controversial enough to end a few political careers at least. It might even leave enough of a cloud over the party in government at the time to affect a future election.
Do you have a reference for this? There's been a lot of talk from ministers about reviewing contracts when break clauses allow, but I haven't seen anything definitive and this still seems to be a matter for individual departments.
Sure, Europe should absolutely be saying no to Palantir.
However
> A powerful company enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran
So does Google, so does Meta, so does Oracle. What do you think all that Palantir software runs on in the clouds? On Palantir's own huge datacenters? They don'thave those. The huge bulk of it runs on it on clouds provided my Microsoft, Amazon, Google.
Meta in particular causes such ridiculously larger amounts of societal damage that focusing so much energy on Palantir specifically is a dead giveaway it's not really about harm caused, it's about optics. Because they themselves likely use WhatsApp and Instagram, yet they don't knowingly use Palantir products.
If you're going to single out one US tech company as "we need to stop cooperating with them", I don't see how it can be any other than Meta. It's like telling someone morbidly obese to stop eating a single cookie per day rather than the 5 cheese pizzas they're also having. Maybe the cookie is slightly worse per gram, but it's also completely ineffective to focus on.
Indeed. It is very disappointing that they chose that as the opening paragraph of their "Why" section, without even making the attempt to relate those points as to why Palantir in Europe would be bad for European citizens.
As someone who strongly supports European digital sovereignty and eliminating dependency on the US, I'm frankly very tired of so damn much of the activist discourse around these issues revolving around US-centred topics. Yes, sure, Gaza is not the US, and the US-Israel war with Iran is bad for Europe, but those are damn well not the reasons we should say no to Palantir.
If the Israel-Gaza conflict hadn't reignited a couple of years ago and thus Gaza wasn't on everybody's minds, and if the Iran attacks hadn't (yet) happened, should we then have nothing to say as to why we don't want Palantir than it's provision of services for internal US immigration policies? Maybe I should be grateful they haven't also listed Palantir being involved in period-tracking of American women in the wake of the reversal of Roe-vs-Wade.
Jesus Christ, won't the most vocal pro-European activists please stop making everything about US talking points, and start being able to take a stance from basic principles and our own interests?
One at a time. Just because you can’t stop all crime doesn’t mean you don’t try to stop any crime. What is it with HN bros and their love of fallicies?
I suspect that if Palantir had the same exact business model but the CEO had supported Kamala Harris, this campaign would not exist. Or if Palantir had said it supported targeting "fascists" the same people denouncing it would be supporters. So if you're actually serious about sovereignty it probably needs a whole campaign around that cause.
> If you're going to single out one US tech company as "we need to stop cooperating with them", I don't see how it can be any other than Meta.
Meta's products also profited off of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. [0]
The lawsuit won't do anything, the employees at Meta are happy with all of that and Meta does not care.
Anyone would have to be morally bankrupt to work at any of those companies and then knowingly put ex-$COMPANY in their bio as a badge to show they helped contribute to a genocide instead of stopping it.
> The lawsuit won't do anything, the employees at Meta are happy with all of that and Meta does not care.
Correct, which is why my comment gets downvoted and these posts get mass upvotes and comments: it makes the legions of (ex-)FAANG HNers feel better about themselves.
Your comment mistakenly assumes this is the only campaign around. But this is just one among many initiatives and websites. There are campaigns against other US big tech companies on this site itself:
I wonder what the alternative for Europe might be? A new project to launch, or is there an existing solution? Siren? Argon? In any case, it could be a great opportunity for Europe to create new jobs whilst increasing its sovereignty.
No that's not true, some try to do it by the book ( ai act, gdpr, and follow German law etc) but they won't have any chance on the market, because those who ignore any law will provide more information / control etc for police, state etc etc
Palantir's technology, as its own name suggests, is inherently dangerous, regardless of who controls it. The right alternative is to simply not build capabilities similar to Palantir in the EU - ideally, to legally forbid building them at all. This type of aggregated data flow simply gives too much control to whoever has access to it, and thus greatly harms democracy.
Petitions don’t do much on their own, but they’re often how pressure starts. And ‘not European issues’ feels off when these companies operate globally anyway.
Pressure is building, thankfully. It's not just petitions now, but legal groups getting involved, etc. At least in the UK. Hopefully it spreads like wildfire around Europe. The orange Oompa Loompa is likely helping kindle those flames nicely.
I love how Palantir is comically evil. Their logo being the Palantir from LoTR (duh) and all. It's wild to me lol. They don't even try to pretend anymore.
Palantir is part of the IDF's kill chain. In Gaza that means supporting the automated targeting systems that choose targets with little to no human oversight, and then the automated tracking systems that follow targets until they are at home with their families so that the entire family can be killed at once.
>Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside.
>“Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” A. said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”
Ex-Colleagues are launching a startup right now: No US-Services from the beginning on, only OpenSource and this new EU-Office thingy.
I think more companies will join the train? Esp new & smaller ones, for sure there is no option for bigCorp like ASML to be free of US-cloud, but maybe its gaining traction.
Surprised by this take. Building a startup is already insanely hard. So I wouldn’t like to add more challenge by spending time integrating with non-US services if they are not top just because of my political views.
I feel a better answer is for Europe to build real, competitive alternatives to US services.
Optimal for society? Optimal for the Epstein class? Or do you mean optimal for the owner, personally, in the very short term?
Because that's the choice people are making these days. It's not really "partisan political posturing" to divest from countries running pedo blackmail rings on the world, or arming genocide, or bombing hundreds of schools. Targeting journalists, then lying about them to try and justify it. Pulling the plug on incubators. Targeting entire families with shoddy AI. Bombing civilian power plants and ambulances and hospitals and so on and on.
There's nothing partisan or posturing about saying "fuck all that". That's just your duty as a human being, the basic bare minimum. That duty doesn't get discarded just because you run a company or have evil competitors trying to race you to the bottom.
When companies are complicit with committing heinous atrocities at scale, and screwing up the world economy for their own gain, I find very little 'merit' in that. Is 'meritocracy' a purely financial term in your view? Do 'respect for life' and 'trust' and other nebulous concepts (which don't immediately affect the balance sheet) have merit?
> Optimal for society? Optimal for the Epstein class? Or do you mean optimal for the owner
No. Optimal for employees and customers.
Making technology choices based on political ideology rather than merit is bad for the interests of both.
The hyperbolic statements in your comment suggest your worldview comes from an online echo chamber. With respect, I think you'd benefit from consuming news from a variety of different sources. Think critically about the biases and agendas of the media.
I don't think it is. I liked a simpler world we lived without having to worry or look where a company was from.
But since this administration has started to threaten allies and keeps this nonsensical trade balance and tariffs argument (which never accounts for the very bulk of what US really exports: IT and financial services which are never included in the trade balance nonsense) you need to answer in some way.
And with tensions rising staying on US services is becoming a strategic risk.
> which never accounts for the very bulk of what US really exports: IT and financial services
Given the growing demand to move away from US services and towards European alternatives, I wonder what the US will look like in 10 years if this move gains significant momentum.
5-eyes, a bit tricky... but yeah anything that isnt a direct data pipeline to US gov and 3-letter agencies is a massive longterm win, in security and economy
I of course do not know your specific usage and requirements, but Berlin-based OpenProject might be a suitable and mature Jira-alternative for you - in addition to being outside US jurisdiction their services are available both on-prem/self-hosted and cloud-based.
Even Alex Karp openly recommends European countries to roll their own alternatives. If anyone in Europe insists on Palantir it’s by their own volition.
The hard work is integration and data workflows, that is hard work regardless of the chosen “exploitation interface”.
Half of the comments in this thread are expressing how they're very against the idea of something like Palantir "but European". It seems like some Europeans really believe that handicapping themselves is a good idea.
perhaps, but civil law is a negotiated contract including rights of all involved. If a tech conglomerate invents new applications, are they now exempt from civil law?
The era of the Nation State began when courts did have real means to enforce against powerful rogues. The suggestion that simply applying a new weaponized technology overrides the legal context is regressive.
No, because gunpowder has no loyalty, no terms of service, no American CEO who can be forced to testify before Congress and say interesting things about European defense customers or provide lists of who has a tattoo or not.
Oh boy, I'm looking forward to the brand new EU program to allocate one million dollars to eligible startups that can develop a weapons and targeting platform so long as all forms are filed well and a registered notary has read out the bill to all participants and each participant has read out the application so that informed consent is received.
But it’s already widespread in Europe, or at least in the Netherlands. Amsterdam Airport uses it, as do the Dutch police and the Dutch army. So shouldn’t it be: kick out Palantir?
I don't think there has ever been a company so poorly understood (willfully or otherwise) as Palantir. They make a software platform, it does not come with any data, does not come connected to any datasources, etc. You can literally sign up right now for a trial and see this for yourself. It looks the same if you were to purchase a license. This headline might as well say 'Say No to PostgreSQL' or 'Say No to Excel' or 'Say No to Salesforce', etc. Wild.
Ok but then why? Or, what's your point here? Like what would explain the behavior you are noting if it really is that absurd and seemingly arbitrary? Is the implication that they just have really bad PR?
I think when people go against palantir, they are specifically against gotham - their govt/intelligence-only product. It is true that gotham is an app built on top of foundry just like any business builds on top of foundry. But in this case since palantir itself is the one building it (and heavily marketing it may I say) they get the bad rep for it.
If XYZ Inc. built gotham with palantir supplying them foundry, palantir can claim to be "just like postgres".
This all matters only if you're actually against gotham / automated surveillance, of course, and believe that it was not happening until alex karp.
or say yes? decel mentality like this is why europe is falling behind. some poor startup will try to backfill these contracts to be the new palantir of europe only to be cut at the knees by regulation and more outcry think piece boycotts like this. rinse and repeat until the us and china become the only relevant acceleration hubs on earth during the singularity
How do we differentiate between genuine empathy and love for the world and simple virtue signalling?
If USA weren't the one safeguarding (contentious but please read on) the world and its modern interests then we would end up with something much worse.
If you only focus locally, it is quite easy to dismiss any form of killing, any form of surveillance and any form of inconvenience. This is "Defund the Police" meme all over again.
I gain social points by showing my disgust against the killings and murder done by the west. I gain nothing by promoting what they safeguard and promote that is necessary for the world to function. Such dynamics will lead to self ownage at the long run but social status points for oneself in the short term.
I agree that in both cases there is an issue that needs to be solved (see NYPD budget as example) so don’t take “defund” at face value but more like “radical changes are needed”
if you want to tear something apart to rebuild peacefully this is the way. their salaries are paid by public money so defund, get everyone out and rebuild. not unlike dept of education which may also need a similar treatment to rebuild
Most of humanity has lived without police for most of its existence. It's not an inherent part of life. And in many places, the police is a very recent (few centuries old) invention with ties to oppressive structures such as slavery and colonialism.
Whether abolishing the police, or defunding the police (to deescalate the militarization), both are proposals formulated by serious academics and politicians, whether you agree or not. It's not virtue signalling. If anything, "defund the police" is still very badly regarded outside very small circles and there's no credit to be gained by holding such positions.
USA weren't the one safeguarding (contentious but please read on) the world
Another commenter posted a link collection of Palantir "safeguarding... the world" here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47564423. I feel you accurately described it as being contentious.
Their CEO is a loon for one thing.
But also the concept of spying is generally unsavory. Nobody wants to be tracked. Palantir has proven that they have no ethical framework for who they work with. Essentially they fill a mercenary role in modern society. Nobody really trusts mercenaries, for obvious reasons.
None of the reasons you’ve given apply to everybody. They do apply to illegal migrants, protestors, and violent criminals though - and others that also cause similar societal problems and disruption. Once again HN - like so many other online meeting spaces - takes for granted that the libertarian and extreme ‘human and civil rights’ tech bro ethos is invariably shared by everybody else. It is not.
> Our political system has served the elite and maximised profit for too long, and now we’re seeing devastating effects on our environment, our economy, our democracy, and our everyday lives. That’s because the systems that are currently in place are built to benefit the rich and powerful. We want a better Europe. One that takes climate action seriously, puts well-being first, welcomes those seeking refuge with open arms, listens to the needs of people, and protects nature.
These people are telling themselves (and others) stories of their own creation, disconnected from any empirical testing of the reality around them. Disturbing to witness, particularly how many people read something like this and without a shred of critical thought say “damn, that sounds good! Sign me up!”
What exactly do you disagree with here? The statement is not very substantive and a bit simplistic, but it's not exactly wrong either. Inequalities are rising, and the system is biased in favor of the owning class. The environment is more often than not forgotten about in lawmaking, which will lead to dire consequences down the line.
To me, the assumptions in your comment about them and their views seem much more like stories of your own creation, likely without any empirical testing of the reality around you.
linhns | 19 hours ago
lpcvoid | 18 hours ago
tinco | 18 hours ago
tossandthrow | 18 hours ago
noisy_boy | 18 hours ago
You didn't have the great unifying dislike of the orange man as a motivating factor then. Now you do and I would wager there is significant public support behind getting away from reliance on the US.
0x3f | 19 hours ago
Ah yes, European issues
kylecazar | 19 hours ago
0x3f | 19 hours ago
kakacik | 17 hours ago
Also, shit done elsewhere will be repeated in all other places, no reason to doubt that.
pavlov | 18 hours ago
There are enough far-right (and generally Putin-aligned, like Hungary) forces on the continent that they’d love to feed.
0x3f | 18 hours ago
They're definitely operating in Europe. They literally have 15 offices scattered around.
Aromasin | 18 hours ago
0x3f | 18 hours ago
yulker | 18 hours ago
0x3f | 18 hours ago
encom | 17 hours ago
esseph | 16 hours ago
It's accurate. They do separate families. How or why doesn't matter, the fact stands in its own. It's not a "mischaracterization", it's a fact.
0x3f | 16 hours ago
esseph | 15 hours ago
But apparently I can't complain because they're both criminals and I can only complain about one! It says in the rulebook!
0x3f | 14 hours ago
esseph | 10 hours ago
encom | 15 hours ago
esseph | 10 hours ago
its_ethan | 9 hours ago
mcosta | 19 hours ago
mrlonglong | 19 hours ago
hkt | 18 hours ago
mrlonglong | 18 hours ago
GuestFAUniverse | 16 hours ago
Silhouette | 17 hours ago
Does anyone have a verifiable source for that? It would be extremely controversial if true and even among the big civil liberties and privacy advocacy groups in the UK I have never seen anyone make that claim.
The defence to using Palantir by British government departments and public services has typically been that Palantir only provides the technology and the data itself is still held and processed in the UK under the native organisation's control. Even this is still controversial because of issues like the CLOUD Act and the general reputation of Palantir.
But that is a long way from allowing the mass export of sensitive personal data to a US firm without the data subjects' knowledge or consent. That looks just plain illegal under our existing data protection legislation. Green lighting it - even in the panic phase during COVID - would probably be controversial enough to end a few political careers at least. It might even leave enough of a cloud over the party in government at the time to affect a future election.
mrlonglong | 14 hours ago
crimsoneer | 13 hours ago
masfuerte | 18 hours ago
mrlonglong | 18 hours ago
https://www.ft.com/content/2d2b1af1-edea-4fd0-a081-3811e34bc...
deaux | 19 hours ago
However
> A powerful company enables genocide in Gaza, helps ICE separate families, and fuels Trump’s war with Iran
So does Google, so does Meta, so does Oracle. What do you think all that Palantir software runs on in the clouds? On Palantir's own huge datacenters? They don'thave those. The huge bulk of it runs on it on clouds provided my Microsoft, Amazon, Google.
Meta in particular causes such ridiculously larger amounts of societal damage that focusing so much energy on Palantir specifically is a dead giveaway it's not really about harm caused, it's about optics. Because they themselves likely use WhatsApp and Instagram, yet they don't knowingly use Palantir products.
If you're going to single out one US tech company as "we need to stop cooperating with them", I don't see how it can be any other than Meta. It's like telling someone morbidly obese to stop eating a single cookie per day rather than the 5 cheese pizzas they're also having. Maybe the cookie is slightly worse per gram, but it's also completely ineffective to focus on.
Mordisquitos | 18 hours ago
As someone who strongly supports European digital sovereignty and eliminating dependency on the US, I'm frankly very tired of so damn much of the activist discourse around these issues revolving around US-centred topics. Yes, sure, Gaza is not the US, and the US-Israel war with Iran is bad for Europe, but those are damn well not the reasons we should say no to Palantir.
If the Israel-Gaza conflict hadn't reignited a couple of years ago and thus Gaza wasn't on everybody's minds, and if the Iran attacks hadn't (yet) happened, should we then have nothing to say as to why we don't want Palantir than it's provision of services for internal US immigration policies? Maybe I should be grateful they haven't also listed Palantir being involved in period-tracking of American women in the wake of the reversal of Roe-vs-Wade.
Jesus Christ, won't the most vocal pro-European activists please stop making everything about US talking points, and start being able to take a stance from basic principles and our own interests?
scorpionfeet | 18 hours ago
MrScruff | 18 hours ago
scorpionfeet | 18 hours ago
onetimeusename | 11 hours ago
snarf_br | 11 hours ago
g-b-r | 18 hours ago
Meta sure causes more damage right now, but banning Palantir, which wouldn't even cause big problems, is an absolute no-brainer
g-b-r | 18 hours ago
deaux | 8 hours ago
Larry Elisson, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are cut from the exact same cloth. It's beyond doubt.
rvz | 18 hours ago
Meta's products also profited off of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. [0]
The lawsuit won't do anything, the employees at Meta are happy with all of that and Meta does not care.
Anyone would have to be morally bankrupt to work at any of those companies and then knowingly put ex-$COMPANY in their bio as a badge to show they helped contribute to a genocide instead of stopping it.
So as long as Meta paid them, no-one cares.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amnesty-report-finds-face...
deaux | 8 hours ago
Correct, which is why my comment gets downvoted and these posts get mass upvotes and comments: it makes the legions of (ex-)FAANG HNers feel better about themselves.
lovelearning | 5 hours ago
- https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2026-01-omnibus-tech-petition-...
- https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-11-dpc-ireland-petition-E...
- https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-05-breakupbigtech-petitio...
- https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-01-elon-musk-dsa-petition...
- https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2024-12-Amazon-workers-petitio...
- https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2021-11-stop-big-tech-petition...
__natty__ | 18 hours ago
wolvoleo | 18 hours ago
Bombthecat | 18 hours ago
There are a few alternatives, depending what you want.
aitchnyu | 18 hours ago
rvz | 18 hours ago
Bombthecat | 14 hours ago
tsimionescu | 18 hours ago
Xelbair | 18 hours ago
why would we need to fund and make Europen Alternative to Surveilance (tm) when we could just you know - not have it at all?
lucasay | 18 hours ago
LightBug1 | 18 hours ago
bicx | 18 hours ago
layer8 | 18 hours ago
helf | 18 hours ago
redanddead | 18 hours ago
they're giving startups an awful name in the eyes of the people, supposedly by the guy teaching others how to do startups, good grief
y1n0 | 10 hours ago
chopete3 | 18 hours ago
Out of technical curiosity,where do we find more on how Palatir is helping technically?.
Types of ML jobs they are running?
Open source or AI models they are using.
inaros | 18 hours ago
"All the Ways Palantir is Assisting Trump’s Abusive Removal Campaign" - https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/palantir-deport...
"‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid" - https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-f...
"The seer and the seen: Surveying Palantir’s surveillance platform" - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2022.2...
"ICE Using Palantir Tool That Feeds On Medicaid Data" - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/report-ice-using-palan...
"How one company – Palantir – is mapping the nation’s data" - https://theconversation.com/when-the-government-can-see-ever...
"AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying" - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blam...
nerfbatplz | 18 hours ago
https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
>Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside.
>“Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” A. said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”
epolanski | 18 hours ago
I'm already moving most of my clients out of any US-based offering.
Azure and Jira are sticky, but they'll be out sooner or later.
KellyCriterion | 18 hours ago
I think more companies will join the train? Esp new & smaller ones, for sure there is no option for bigCorp like ASML to be free of US-cloud, but maybe its gaining traction.
polyamid23 | 18 hours ago
pimeys | 17 hours ago
grsmvg | 17 hours ago
I paints the picture of it being mostly a hyped marketing wrapper around Nextcloud that hasn't even launched yet.
gip | 17 hours ago
I feel a better answer is for Europe to build real, competitive alternatives to US services.
tinodb | 17 hours ago
cineticdaffodil | 16 hours ago
cbeach | 15 hours ago
All people who run companies should relish their competition behaving sub-optimally.
Schmerika | 12 hours ago
Optimal for society? Optimal for the Epstein class? Or do you mean optimal for the owner, personally, in the very short term?
Because that's the choice people are making these days. It's not really "partisan political posturing" to divest from countries running pedo blackmail rings on the world, or arming genocide, or bombing hundreds of schools. Targeting journalists, then lying about them to try and justify it. Pulling the plug on incubators. Targeting entire families with shoddy AI. Bombing civilian power plants and ambulances and hospitals and so on and on.
There's nothing partisan or posturing about saying "fuck all that". That's just your duty as a human being, the basic bare minimum. That duty doesn't get discarded just because you run a company or have evil competitors trying to race you to the bottom.
When companies are complicit with committing heinous atrocities at scale, and screwing up the world economy for their own gain, I find very little 'merit' in that. Is 'meritocracy' a purely financial term in your view? Do 'respect for life' and 'trust' and other nebulous concepts (which don't immediately affect the balance sheet) have merit?
cbeach | 5 minutes ago
No. Optimal for employees and customers.
Making technology choices based on political ideology rather than merit is bad for the interests of both.
The hyperbolic statements in your comment suggest your worldview comes from an online echo chamber. With respect, I think you'd benefit from consuming news from a variety of different sources. Think critically about the biases and agendas of the media.
SlightlyLeftPad | 18 hours ago
epolanski | 18 hours ago
But since this administration has started to threaten allies and keeps this nonsensical trade balance and tariffs argument (which never accounts for the very bulk of what US really exports: IT and financial services which are never included in the trade balance nonsense) you need to answer in some way.
And with tensions rising staying on US services is becoming a strategic risk.
e2le | 18 hours ago
Given the growing demand to move away from US services and towards European alternatives, I wonder what the US will look like in 10 years if this move gains significant momentum.
bdangubic | 18 hours ago
kakacik | 18 hours ago
beerws | 18 hours ago
They even have a specific Jira-migration tool: https://www.openproject.org/docs/installation-and-operations...
tankenmate | 17 hours ago
lokimedes | 18 hours ago
The hard work is integration and data workflows, that is hard work regardless of the chosen “exploitation interface”.
delichon | 18 hours ago
airstrike | 18 hours ago
It's literally at the very top of the article:
- Stop signing new contracts with Palantir.
- Review and phase out existing contracts with the company.
- Invest in transparent, publicly accountable European alternatives.
And Palantir isn't like gunpowder, so I'm not even sure the analogy had any legs to begin with
raincole | 17 hours ago
drums8787 | 18 hours ago
gnerd00 | 18 hours ago
The era of the Nation State began when courts did have real means to enforce against powerful rogues. The suggestion that simply applying a new weaponized technology overrides the legal context is regressive.
dfxm12 | 18 hours ago
badlibrarian | 18 hours ago
gradus_ad | 18 hours ago
renewiltord | 18 hours ago
niekiepriekie | 18 hours ago
thomasgeelens | 17 hours ago
inaros | 17 hours ago
"Palantir is well on its way to conquering Europe" - https://www.euractiv.com/news/palantir-is-well-on-its-way-to...
hashstring | 16 hours ago
niekiepriekie | 15 hours ago
https://www.privacynieuws.nl/binnenlands-nieuws/politie-en-j...
hashstring | 10 hours ago
illiac786 | 15 hours ago
> Review and phase out existing contracts with the company.
karl11 | 18 hours ago
surgical_fire | 17 hours ago
The comparison to PostgreSQL in particular is very poor in that regard.
simianwords | 16 hours ago
beepbooptheory | 17 hours ago
tasuki | 17 hours ago
Wat? These are wildly different things:
> Say No to PostgreSQL
Sure, if you self-host it, this would be a stupid thing to say.
> Say No to Excel
A little worse: it's proprietary and who knows what it does and where it sends your data.
> Say No to Salesforce
Way worse: they host the data, and who knows what they do with it.
simianwords | 16 hours ago
porridgeraisin | 17 hours ago
If XYZ Inc. built gotham with palantir supplying them foundry, palantir can claim to be "just like postgres".
This all matters only if you're actually against gotham / automated surveillance, of course, and believe that it was not happening until alex karp.
text0404 | 15 hours ago
Salesforce, Microsoft, and PostgresSQL contributors aren't bragging about how their products enable lethal military operations.
nicklo | 17 hours ago
grokcodec | 17 hours ago
chme | 17 hours ago
I could not find any information on what kind of influence a online-petition on wemove.eu would have...
simianwords | 16 hours ago
If USA weren't the one safeguarding (contentious but please read on) the world and its modern interests then we would end up with something much worse.
If you only focus locally, it is quite easy to dismiss any form of killing, any form of surveillance and any form of inconvenience. This is "Defund the Police" meme all over again.
I gain social points by showing my disgust against the killings and murder done by the west. I gain nothing by promoting what they safeguard and promote that is necessary for the world to function. Such dynamics will lead to self ownage at the long run but social status points for oneself in the short term.
kelipso | 16 hours ago
Whenever I see this, I recognize it as obvious scaremongering.
simianwords | 16 hours ago
bdangubic | 15 hours ago
simianwords | 15 hours ago
bdangubic | 15 hours ago
simianwords | 14 hours ago
bdangubic | 14 hours ago
southerntofu | 14 hours ago
Whether abolishing the police, or defunding the police (to deescalate the militarization), both are proposals formulated by serious academics and politicians, whether you agree or not. It's not virtue signalling. If anything, "defund the police" is still very badly regarded outside very small circles and there's no credit to be gained by holding such positions.
gopher_space | 15 hours ago
We don't bother doing that because it's a waste of time.
> I gain social points
You gain no social points.
simianwords | 15 hours ago
It literally isn't. I'm not sure what you are trying to say here.
frm88 | 6 hours ago
Another commenter posted a link collection of Palantir "safeguarding... the world" here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47564423. I feel you accurately described it as being contentious.
gobdovan | 15 hours ago
avazhi | 11 hours ago
HDBaseT | 11 hours ago
avazhi | 4 hours ago
danny_codes | 8 hours ago
avazhi | 4 hours ago
None of the reasons you’ve given apply to everybody. They do apply to illegal migrants, protestors, and violent criminals though - and others that also cause similar societal problems and disruption. Once again HN - like so many other online meeting spaces - takes for granted that the libertarian and extreme ‘human and civil rights’ tech bro ethos is invariably shared by everybody else. It is not.
periodjet | 9 hours ago
These people are telling themselves (and others) stories of their own creation, disconnected from any empirical testing of the reality around them. Disturbing to witness, particularly how many people read something like this and without a shred of critical thought say “damn, that sounds good! Sign me up!”
thrance | 9 hours ago
lovelearning | 6 hours ago