>Discord have belatedly confirmed that they're working with Persona, an identity detection firm backed by a fund directed by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, as part of Discord's new global age verification system rollout.
>As PCGamer note, Persona's lead investors during two recent rounds of venture capital funding were Founders Fund, who valued them at $1.5 billion in 2021. The Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2020.
>Palantir have, among other things, worked extensively with the USA's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, [...]
The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to Palantir or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Thiel, but is there any evidence for this? For instance, is Thiel known for meddling in the affairs of the companies his fund invests in, or pushing them together for collabs like what Musk does (eg. with x/x.ai/spacex)?
All these people are in the same rotten ideological boat. It's safe to assume that, as long as they're not competing for the same pile of money, they're cooperating. If not now, then eventually.
Brazilian Serpro (state IT company) also has a deal with Palantir.
"The partnership between Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service) and Palantir Technologies is a technological collaboration focused on leveraging large-scale data analysis (Big Data) and the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Brazilian public sector"
I honestly am glad that all of this is happening, because any time a conservative in the future starts complaining about government overreach, the only response to them should be is that "well, this is what you like".
> I know children aren't responsible for the sins of their parents, but it doesn't seem wholly irrelevant here that Palantir's UK division is headed by Oswald Mosley's grandson.
funny how the FAQ disclaimer about Persona already vanished from the site. not a great look when your transparency lasts shorter than the data retention.
Let's pretend that age verification is a valid need -- is there a way using cryptographic approaches to viably allow an end user to prove that they meet the criteria without sharing other data that they don't want third parties to have access to?
What I find quite interesting is that the internet was kind of the wild west in the early 2000s, it was exciting and vibrant, a kind of diaspora. Then in the late noughties early teens we saw massive consolidation through market forces, everyone moved onto Facebook, everyone moved into walled garden social media platforms and even the social networky ways of discovering organic content died off (Digg redesign, death of stumble upon etc.).
That was.... bad, but it wasn't a moral decision it was kind of just market forces. The market means that no one can run a taxi company anymore, you're just kind of all employees of uber or whoever your local monopoly is. Not great, and arguably the way they got there should have been under more scrutiny but it was more or less pure market forces.
What is happening now is not market forces. What is happening now is rich people telling the government to institute legislation that hands power to rich people. Whether it's Elon Musk's public funded, privatized space programme or Thiel's public mandated, private enforced age-gating. All of this is corrupt. There's not really another word for it.
You act like bad outcomes are somehow okay if they result from narket forces, and I'm really not sure why.
If market forces regularly and consistently lead to undesirable outcomes in the long-term, maybe we should re-evaluate why we surrender so much of our policymaking to "market forces"
The use of "experiment" really irks me. Might be useful internally but running an involuntary experiment that users are forced to participate in to continue using a service they may pay for is straight up hostile- not even to mention the nature of the experiment handling sensitive personal data.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 33.1 ms ] thread>As PCGamer note, Persona's lead investors during two recent rounds of venture capital funding were Founders Fund, who valued them at $1.5 billion in 2021. The Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2020.
>Palantir have, among other things, worked extensively with the USA's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, [...]
The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to Palantir or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Thiel, but is there any evidence for this? For instance, is Thiel known for meddling in the affairs of the companies his fund invests in, or pushing them together for collabs like what Musk does (eg. with x/x.ai/spacex)?
The UK's NHS is already quite close with Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/uk/
"The partnership between Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service) and Palantir Technologies is a technological collaboration focused on leveraging large-scale data analysis (Big Data) and the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Brazilian public sector"
"ad-hominem is ugly and wrong, like you"
They are not friendly.
That was.... bad, but it wasn't a moral decision it was kind of just market forces. The market means that no one can run a taxi company anymore, you're just kind of all employees of uber or whoever your local monopoly is. Not great, and arguably the way they got there should have been under more scrutiny but it was more or less pure market forces.
What is happening now is not market forces. What is happening now is rich people telling the government to institute legislation that hands power to rich people. Whether it's Elon Musk's public funded, privatized space programme or Thiel's public mandated, private enforced age-gating. All of this is corrupt. There's not really another word for it.
If market forces regularly and consistently lead to undesirable outcomes in the long-term, maybe we should re-evaluate why we surrender so much of our policymaking to "market forces"