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@chpietsch@fedifreu.de

Post #2257475

2026-04-26 21:09 UTC

13. We should fight for the world we want, and build the tools needed by future generations. Pacifism would be suicidal in this period of global turbulence and resource wars, but real hard power lies in technology: Programmers should be creating technologies to live a free life and prosper in a hostile society of surveillance and control. Decentralization is the only way these technologies will survive against the inevitable repression. 14. The State will not help us. The state is a dying pre-Internet institution that increasingly resembles nothing but a Ponzi scheme fueled by taxes and debt. None of the youth alive today will likely inherit any benefits, such as welfare and health care. Technology can support an alternative: The decentralization of power to the individual and communities that they join voluntarily. 15. Centralized and opaque algorithms are a danger to free speech. Propaganda is the flip-side of surveillance, as continual propaganda prevents anyone from even thinking of challenging the system. Social media monopolies promote propaganda to create a generalized idiocy while silencing those that would dare to criticize the reigning order before they can organize against it. 16. Building new forms of social organization with each other is vital to survival. The traditional mediascape of politics and entertainment exists to distract us from building networked solidarity and distributed autonomous organizations across borders. The hierarchical state is as relevant to us as the medieval church and kings were to the formation of the joint-stock corporation and the labor union. 17. Digital identity is the next step in their system of control. Within the next few years, access to the Internet – including in Europe and the United States – will require biometric national identity cards, using the flimsy excuse of “protecting children.” The real goal is to gatekeep free access to subversive political content and halt cross-border communication in order to prevent new forms of self-organization and resistance from emerging. 18. Only when one can be anonymous is one truly free. The freedom to express oneself without censorship and surveillance is a vital precondition for both the autonomous use of reason and the democratic evolution of society. Technology must enable the freedom to selectively reveal ourselves to the world – so that we can become who we want to be – by preserving the right to privacy over the Internet, including not just individual privacy, but also the right to transact and form contracts privately. 19. America created the first global surveillance state, but it will not be the last. Too many have forgotten, or perhaps taken for granted, the revelations of Wikileaks and Snowden. States across the world from China to Russia are creating even more powerful global surveillance systems and propaganda machines. Leveraging private defense contracts in countries across the world, Palantir seeks to make itself the operating system of a cross-border global secret state while it pushes its own farcical version of ethno-nationalism. 20. Culture wars are a psyop. The “Epstein class” virtue-signals about morality and the superiority of their civilization, all while trying to return to the rule of hereditary elites, even in the United States. Rather than reverse the gains of the Enlightenment, we take the side of our ancestors who fought a centuries-long battle for individual liberty, scientific progress, decentralized markets, bottom-up democracy, and the emancipation of humanity from feudal monarchs and their make-believe mythologies. 21. New forms of technology can reshape the world. Technology is not just a tool, but the world we live in and an extension of our cognitive capabilities. The co-operation of humans with the collective intelligence embedded in AI could accelerate human progress and overcome planetary crises such as climate change and atomic war that threatens the survival of our species. 22. Live free or die trying. We must bear eternal vigilance in the struggle against fascism, and the battlefield is technology. There is no middle ground: Technologists must choose whether to work for the enslavement of humanity or to create new spaces for freedom. source: https://www.nym.com/blog/anti-palantir-manifesto 2/3 #palantir #antiPalantirManifesto #fightPalantir

Replies (2)

  • @chpietsch@fedifreu.de 2026-04-26 21:14

    Note from Harry Halpin These are my personal beliefs, not those of Nym. Yet as a philosopher that founded a tech startup working on anti-surveillance tech, I have a responsibility to respond to this manifesto of Palantir and it's so-called "philosopher-CEO" Alex Karp. I studied philosophy under the French philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler, who tried to warn us of the rise of behavioral control and artificial stupidity on digital platforms. It is to his legacy that I dedicate this response. For my further thoughts on the political philosophy of technology and surveillance, see my latest philosophy paper on the "Immaterial Constitution" created by internet standards in response to the Snowden revelations of NSA mass surveillance. The battle continues, and now the stakes are even higher. source: https://www.nym.com/blog/anti-palantir-manifesto Thanks to @geertlovink@mastodon.social for posting this to https://www.nettime.org! 3/3 #palantir #antiPalantirManifesto #fightPalantir

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  • @t3sserakt@c3d2.social 2026-05-02 20:50

    @chpietsch@fedifreu.de I know these are not your words, but I like to emphasize that the state is not inherently useless. Decentralization can be valuable as a check against an overreaching state and can strengthen individual autonomy and local communities, but it is not a complete substitute for public institutions. Nevertheless, I believe that anonymity is important for individuals and communities to protect themselves from an overbearing government. That is why what the Nym project promises to achieve is so important. Because it’s the next step in the technological arms race over privacy. Even though I have reservations about the way this technology has been introduced and is governed by the Nym project, it is what is currently available and urgently needed.

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