Six people were arrested in New York City in protests over the firm’s alleged work building a massive new surveillance apparatus for President Donald Trump
To me, one of the most interesting quotes from the article was:
“Our intel tells us that… one of the most important things we can do to hurt Palantir right now is disrupting their recruitment pipeline by hurting their brand image, to the point where even very apolitical recent college graduates [feel] that it’s social suicide.”
This really seems to me like exactly the kind of thing that a peaceful protest could accomplish that could really pay off!
It is not obvious to me, though, that the following tactic is super-effective at this:
After blocking the street outside Palantir’s unassuming redbrick office, and briefly making way for an ambulance, the crowd marched to a nondescript building nearby where organizers said the company was holding a developer conference to recruit new talent, slapping rhythmically on the windows and chanting “quit your jobs!”
This seemed to work in terms of shutting the event down:
Although Palantir did not confirm whether its event was disrupted, one visibly confused event worker did try to deliver equipment, only to find their intended recipients had vanished.
I suspect, though, that if the event were disrupted then the impression the people got at it was more along the lines of, “There are crazy people outside!” and less along the lines of, “I should really feel guilty about my life decisions.”
Having said that, it is not clear that a lower level of confrontation would have accomplished anything either, so who am I to say?
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
To me, one of the most interesting quotes from the article was:
This really seems to me like exactly the kind of thing that a peaceful protest could accomplish that could really pay off!
It is not obvious to me, though, that the following tactic is super-effective at this:
This seemed to work in terms of shutting the event down:
I suspect, though, that if the event were disrupted then the impression the people got at it was more along the lines of, “There are crazy people outside!” and less along the lines of, “I should really feel guilty about my life decisions.”
Having said that, it is not clear that a lower level of confrontation would have accomplished anything either, so who am I to say?