Descent into

Glad some of them are finally realizing it at least.

Decent? It was always in plain sight. Palantiri, hello?

None of them realized it before? Well then, if you can talk the talk, walk the walk and quit in masse.

Palantir was founded—with initial venture capital investment from the CIA—at a moment of national consensus following the September 11, 2001, attacks, when many saw fighting terrorism abroad as the most critical mission facing the US.

You mean the backlash to our constant and brutal meddling with the will and sovereignty of the rest of the world, the pillaging and raping of both the earth and the humans who occupy it for our own monetary gain? Living like kings through acts of evil so we could parade around calling ourselves The Greatest Country, and even going so far as to hide the worst of the worst atrocities from our own citizens, and the things that couldn’t escape the historical record being swept away as “but we’re better now!” and pretending that just by “stopping” (which we almost never actually do, we just hide it better) that we’ve fixed the problems?

That terrorism?

I guess 30% of Americans really did know it, and they voted for the most American man they knew of. God this place sucks.

Descent?

Wow, must be bad if even the fascists are seeing the 'descent' into fascism as a bad thing.

A decade ago a young an gifted software developer acquaintance of mine was going to work for Palantir and already back then I warned him of the kind of company he was joining.

After the Snowden Revelations it was already pretty obvious that Palantir specialized in data analytics of and overview interfaces for mass surveillance data - they made their money from helping authoritarian activities, including those in supposed Democracies.

It's pretty obvious that a company doing that is built on the principled of having no Ethics or Morals.

Go to bed with the dogs, wake up with fleas.

There are two surprising aspects of this to me. Firstly that the employees feel confident enough to express concern about Palantir's actions in official channels. I would have thought that the nature of their work was obvious enough that this would be a cultural taboo and therefore self-censored. I guess some of them have limits to suspending disbelief for what they had likely internally framed as "work for the benefit of national security" or "job pays too well to care".

The second part is that not all of this official channel discussion was immediately wiped by Palantir, but perhaps they also relied on the premise of self-censorship in preventing these conversations at scale.

Either way, I'm somewhat relieved there's someone at Palantir worried about this at all. The more of them who are worried by this, the more leaks we'll see.

What did they think they were doing, solving child hunger?

Really struggling to understand why they thought, "giant spying program indiscriminately gathering data on everyone in the wold," was ever a good thing.

You would think the name was a dead give away that they were cartoonishly evil?

I have no simpathy at all for them at all.

Wait...just now!? Lol, even in online tech circles where people are completely willing to throw their morals in the trash in exchange for a job, it's been well known for quite some time now that Palantir is the tippity top of "sell your soul for money" place to work at. This was long before Thiel was in the news and Palantir was selling data and tech to ICE.

Why would it be surprising that you sold your soul to a bunch of fascists, and if you're already working there, do you have even the slightest shred of morality left to even say a word about it!? Apparently so, but talk about drinking the company Kool-Aid. Damn...

can't blame them; there were no signs in the beginning.

*Actively maneuvering into…

“Descent” sounds passive.

Still collecting that paycheck and not rocking the boat.

"Descent"? As in even further than rock bottom?

Employees of Evil Corp wondering if what they’re doing benefits Evil

"Descent"? Which way is down when you're at the bottom?

Fuck around and find out. Goddamn idiots should have known what they're getting into. Like their boss having moments of megalomania.

"Descent". As if they were not obviously and explicitly fascist from day 1. How dumb can you be?

Fuck these fuckers. I'll forgive them when they start actively sabotaging every single thing they can from the inside.

they knew, you just justified because it was just a job.

Decently into Facism

The call is coming from inside the house fascist company

I have seen the "are we the baddies" meme many times, anyone know where it's from?

They need to unionize if they want to see change

Depolitized white cis hetero dudes will always fall for security (French socialists even reused a far right slogan saying "Security is the first freedom" without even going social security...) as an argument. Some will keep their works hoping for third party regulation so stop them to lescent even further. For Palantir workers though, harder to defend. The palantir is litteraly bad in the lord of the ring

Is it really a descent if it was already there?

You can't descend into fascism if you already start out with fascism. *taps forehead*

Didn’t know “descent” was an adjective for “acknowledgement” or “recognition”

They already knew, just covering their asses now playing stupid.

Then came the deadly February 28 missile strike on an Iranian elementary school on the first full day of the Trump administration and Israel’s war in Iran. The US is the only known country in the conflict to use that specific type of missile. More than 120 children were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the school, kicking off a series of investigations that concluded that the US was responsible and that surveillance tools like Palantir’s Maven system had been used during that day’s strikes. For a company full of employees already reeling over its work with ICE, possible involvement in the death of children was a breaking point.

“I guess the root of what I’m asking is … were we involved, and are doing anything to stop a repeat if we were,” one employee asked in the Palantir news Slack channel. Some employees posed similar questions in the thread, while others criticized them for discussing what could be considered classified information in a Slack channel open to the entire company. The investigation is ongoing.

The Palantir spokesperson said the company was “proud” to support the US military “across Democratic and Republican administrations.”

In March, Karp gave an interview to CNBC claiming that AI could undermine the power of “humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters” and increase the power of working-class male voters. While critics reacted to the piece, calling the statements concerning, so did employees internally: “Is it true that AI disruption is going to disproportionately negatively affect women and people who vote Democrat? and if it is, why are we cool with that?” one worker asked on Slack in a channel dedicated to news about Palantir.

I think it would certainly be appropriate to socially isolate all these people so that they might finally realize what atrocities they are committing, since they themselves don’t seem to realize what crimes they are complicit in.

Even the murder of 120 children still doesn’t seem terrible enough for these monsters to see the light.

They are terrible people, and that is why they deserve nothing but contempt, for they have more than earned it.

More of a straight line tbh

Descent? Hard to desend even further when even hell looked down on you!

Wasn't that the owners plan?

About 9 years ago, I was on unemployment. To keep my benefits I needed to apply to X companies per week. It didn't matter if any of those applications led to interviews or not. If every application was successful, the number of interviews that resulted was exhausting. As a result, I applied to some jobs on purpose that I knew would reject me just to keep the number of interviews manageable.

One job I applied for that I knew would reject me was Palantir. They definitely wanted someone with my skills, so I had to make it clear that I was a bad fit with my cover letter. I made a cover letter that matched the things they claimed to believe in their mission statement, etc. But, I did it while talking about how personal privacy was critical, how openness and transparency was important for a functioning society, etc. Despite my perfect match of skills to the job description, they didn't even follow up.

All that to say, even 9 years ago it was absolutely obvious what kind of company Palantir was, and anybody who works there now either had no morals, or knew that they were being paid to put those morals to the side in exchange for an enormous pay package.

I thought fascism was their cornerstone? What kind of prick do you need to be to become a palantir employee anyway?

"descent"

Better late than never I guess. But it's pretty fucking late.

Anybody who's surprised by this is part of the problem.

If an organization possesses influence or power that can be abused, then it inevitably will be abused. It doesn't matter how conscientious people are or how many safeguards are put in place - loathsome, power-hungry pieces of shit will angle for position in the organization, and sooner or later some will get through, and they'll immediately start shifting the organization to accommodate them, which is to say, to accommodate loathsome, power-hungry pieces of shit. And it's all downhill from there.

I'm not an anarchist by accident.

It was always a fascist company; did you really believe otherwise?

Fine illustration choice.