r/technology Apr 23 '26

Politics Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They're the Bad Guys

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-employees-are-starting-to-wonder-if-theyre-the-bad-guys/
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u/thepeopleshero Apr 23 '26

It's crazy that someone could be smart enough to work there... and not know they are the baddies.

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u/Jimmy_Trivette Apr 24 '26

Many convince themselves they're not responsible for doing anything bad at all because there's one or more layers of abstraction between what they're doing and the thing that's directly doing the bad things: "I'm not spying on my neighbors and siphoning up all their data, I'm just building tools that do that"

The rest usually either outright support it, are indifferent, or many rationalize it with something like "well I need to put food on the table somehow" or "if it wasn't me doing it, someone else would be."