Right, humans are bad about that kind of thing. I think it has to do with Dunbar's number? The monkeysphere? It's hard for us to model a lot of people as full people in our head, especially as they're more removed from us.

Like you probably don't really think about the garbage man as a fully fleshed out guy with hopes, dreams, a favorite band, a love that got away, and all that. When you have some absolutely rancid trash, you probably just throw it in the can and forget about it. But if it was your mother or best friend that was going to have to deal with it, maybe you'd be more careful. Wouldn't want the bag to rip and spray maggots all over Mom.

That's fine. That's all of us.

But I think there's degrees. Shades. Like you mentioned cell phones. Most of us accept the out of sight horrors that go with them. But, like, some people are absolute assholes to wait staff. Just treat the waiter like shit, are rude to the coffee shop people, whatever. I think most of us recognize that as bad.

Somewhere between those two points I think is "I'm going to build software to spy on people". Personally, I think that should be ok the far side of the line. The not okay side. Why? A bit of self preservation, a bit of ethics, and a helping of "I don't want to contribute to bad things happening to people, even ones I don't know".

This post is getting long. I think you're right that it's not as simple as "doesn't care about other people" but I think that's a factor.

I have never seen it but I remember the snake meme was a highlight of the time

Good evidence of astroturfing on Reddit. That Reddit took action and banned the Palantir agents only provides evidence that exposure of the op is the problem. Not evidence that Reddit acts in good faith.

A good question to ask, is what would happen if Lemmy was the victim of astroturfing. It's decentralized for starters and groups might not even reside in the same place on the fediverse. Also I expect Reddit has monitoring, analytics and tools that could flag behaviour rather than somebody having to go through logs trying to find patterns.

I think Lemmy and other federated platforms have escaped having to deal with these issues simply because someone attempting to astroturf will do it on the biggest platform. So Lemmy escapes not by any technical or administrative virtue but by being smallfry.

Setting aside the veritable TITAN-loads of shady shit Palsntir is up to, it's also worth noting that Reddit's policy changes have made it clear that providing a platform for the spread of disinformation is a central part of its current business model, so I'd assume that not only is Palantir using it for that purpose, but that they are far from alone.

Palantir is pretty awful. I knew a guy who took a job there, a bunch of years ago. When he said where he was going, I asked "But what if they work on something really shitty? Like spying on people?". He was like, "Meh", with a big shrug.

He was friendly and kind to the people around him, but I guess he just didn't care about anyone he didn't know personally right now.

Yup. I've worked in tech for nearly 20 years. Most people who work in tech don't give a shit about the ethics of what they do or where they work if the money is good.

This is a screenshot from one of the discords of current and/or previous coworkers, but the sentiment is everywhere

Palantir may be engaging in a coordinated disinformation campaign

Is, has been, is designed to, whole purpose is, etc... definitely not "may"...

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Ex pal people are on slack, not discord. This is probably an investor server

Palantir just partnered with TeleTracking. For anyone outside of health care, TeleTracking is a health tech company that's been on decline for awhile.

Why is this relevant, you may ask? TeleTracking still has a lot of clients, many of which are smaller hospitals grandfathered into older, cheaper contracts. If you go to a hospital that uses TeleTracking, Palantir now has all your patient health information.

Palantir is the absolute scum of the information world. Tech with promise, but used in the worst kind of ways.

Good evidence of astroturfing on Reddit. That Reddit took action and banned the Palantir agents only provides evidence that exposure of the op is the problem. Not evidence that Reddit acts in good faith.

Who cares? Anyone still drinking the reddit cool aid is just asking for a leopard to eat their face.

What kind of ways, can you explain?

If I'm reading this right, you would basically say that any company that helps government institutions spy on people is awful, is that right?

I think we should all care about what misinformation is spread to what people

I haven't thought through all the scenarios and edge cases, but generally spying on the public seems dicey and ripe for abuse. Especially if it's just like "the public, all the time, whenever we feel like it," instead of "ok we got a warrant signed by a judge to investigate Joe Bombguy".

Put me in my place if this is nonsense but doesn't it make way more sense if the astroturfing is done by WSB goons? I just don't see corporate entities coordinating this kind of thing