Silicon Valley has become a cancer on the world. There are too many companies run by greedy, unhinged psychopaths who do not care how their products and services affect the world. It’s not just Thiel’s companies. It’s Meta and Google and Apple and Amazon and Uber and OpenAI.
The only thing Silicon Valley is missing is a series of volcano lairs for their founders and CEOs.
Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian bunker is technically a volcano lair. And Bezos has Dr. evil’s laugh and space rocket.
100%
If you don’t mind my nitpiking. This isn’t a silicon valley issue, it’s the consequence of how corporations are set up to demand ever endless unlimited growth. They are all cancerous tumors competing with each other.
Silicone Valley is where the US IT corporations settled.
Don’t give them ideas, they’ll start drilling for new volcanoes.
Don’t forget Hooly
Silicon Valley has become a cancer on the world
Jesus, that poster! I was sure the black woman was drawn by Rob Liefeld, but wrong decade I guess
“Maybe this thing named after an evil tyrant’s evil scrying orb is bad”
It’s even more ironic: the palantiri were built as communication devices, to be used for good by the right people. Then Sauron came to power and immediately used them to corrupt and spy on the rulers using them.
So they are dangerous tools that are just one bad government away from being used for horrible things. WHY DID THEY BUILD THEM THEN?
And BTW there is another company called Palantir. They do Drupal development and are very ethical and inclusive. I always enjoyed their training classes when I was still working and got to go to DrupalCon. NOT associated with Peter Heel.
Why did they pick that name?
Crazy how long it takes for supposedly extremely brilliant scientists and engineers working at Evil LLC to realize that maybe their work is a net loss for humanity.
It’s almost as if… they just didn’t care and pretended to realize their mistakes once everything was well exposed. It’s like reading obviously satirical scientists’ memos in Resident Evil. Except it’s real life and they’re not satire.
There’s also the function of needing a job to survive and cognitive dissonance.
I.e. “I’m not killing anyone I just do xyz and then other people use it to do bad things, not my responsibility”
It is lying to themselves, but that’s how it happens
I used to write unethical software for marketing men. Now I don’t.
I’ve straight up told recruiters I don’t want to contribute to the brown skeleton factory.
I did that at the cost to my employment options.
Its really, really hard to go work for Evil Inc and not realise you’re a bad person.
You can only make that claim for so long. These aren’t Amazon deliver drivers we’re talking about. The developers and higher ups at Palantir could easily find another job somewhere else.
The job market in tech is not good right now, so they may not. I have a friend who is a dev and was getting heavily recruited by Palantir because he had a clearance already. The money was really good, and he was at the cusp of taking the job because he had been ghosted by other companies for months and only had a handful of interviews after being laid off six-ish months ago. Luckily, another place gave him an offer for a bit lower compensation, which he took. If that other place didn’t come through, though, I think he would have gone with Palantir so that he could get some income.
ETA: That said, Palantir is evil, and my friend was in that position because of the BS that is the US economic system, which is perpetuated by the people at Palantir.
Grime calculus that is modern ethics. One of the funniest examples to me is Russia Orthdoxy, the Iranian ayatollah, and American Evangelicals all claiming each other in vary amounts being the forces of Satan and The Gays.
Again dark humor to me. They are monsters excusing the oppression and murder of people though, but when fighting Satan muders ok./s
Plenty of secular satans out there too. Communists, Nazis, The Jews, Blood thirsty anarchists, narcists, billionaires, schisos, etc basically any polball or Jreg character. They can be used to justify some horrendous deviation from morality and ethics. You know killing baby hilter kind of stuff. Reeducation camps are ok if they’re “terrorists” and the government is moved by the will of the people. Etc. etc.
Those companies have extremely well developed propaganda machines. They have to sell their technology and products as benefits to governments (i.e. society) and solutions to chaos (i.e. crime and terrorism), and they have extremely well refined language to describe themselves in positive term. If you don’t look past the company line, it’s easy to believe that the skeptics and warnings are all just FUD from haters, especially when the propaganda pays your mortgage.
Then Palantir goes and publishes an actual fascist manifesto…
lol most of them are probably doing this to save face now that Thiel is getting more coverage and saying more unhinged shit. Otherwise they gladly keep taking home their paychecks and watching their stock vest.
Was that unclear…?
Better late than never, I suppose. They got some making up to do.
I saw another article that they provided the targets that lead to the school full of little girls being bombed. They are the bad guys.
“starting?” I assumed everyone who wasn’t onboard left years ago.
At least Linkedin is full of “ex-Palantir” people, but tbh Linkedin job descriptions are not know for their truthfulness.You mean to tell me, everyone on that platform isn’t a CEO…
Those ghouls can feel and regret? I thought they were in it for the love of the boot, funny mustaches, and a voyeurism kink.
Greed. Everyone is to blame. To many people want money and have no clue what they need it for. They sale any dignity just to be wealthy bc that will fix everything. Right?
Just unionize. If you live somewhere that hates unions, build one anyway.
I’ve had to help walk back some family here because “if only I made a bunch of money instead of x” talks. Mostly by saying “yeah stinks, all you did was actually help people, should of embezzled enough money to get a foundation” or something.
Like I get it. Money is a form of power, and those without power are powerless, but so many egotist out here only imagining they matter if they changed civilization across the multiverse in some delusional power fantasy really out screwing with the perspective.
If Palantir employees had any amount of introspection, moral compass, or ethics, they wouldn’t be working at fucking Palantir. It’s safe to assume anyone working at Peter Thiel’s House Of Horrors is a turbo-Fascist, and should be [REDACTED] with the rest of them.
This is lemmy you can say “fed balls first to rabid hamsters” here.
