Apparently Palantir can access the content of social media accounts that were deleted a decade ago.
Cool, cool cool cool. Nothing dystopian about that at all.
Don't just be mad at palantir.
The American government funded palantir.
Palantir couldn't exist without the helping hand of the American government.
The time to give a fuck was long before Snowden made his leaks.
All the dystopian stuff people fear the government will do is already being done by a framework of companies funded by our government.
Oh great the second I become president my DeviantArt is getting leaked
Like, they've been able to do this for 25 odd years.
There were gov data centers with thousands of petabytes when I was in college. Prism had the gov archiving every phone call and all internet traffic back in '08...
This is not news.
As soon as the quantum cryptography tech gets there, they'll start decrypting the signal and matrix chats you had yesterday.
Privacy is illusory and temporary.
The stasi government would never use my data against me. I've got nothing to hide. Hey I think I'll go buy this doadd for no reason at all no subliminal advertising
The US government is temporary. Not our privacy.
People apparently don't know about the NSA Utah Datacenter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
Been a thing for over a decade, unimaginable total storage size, and they literally archive everything.
This place had between 3 and 12 exabytes of storage capacity, in 2013.
1 exabyte is 1 billion gigabytes.
How big was your pc/laptop hard drive in 2013?
Maybe... 250 gigs to 2 teras, something like that?
This data center could now easily be in the yottabyte range ( millions of exabytes ), maybe even ronnabytes ( billions of exabytes ).
https://www.rankred.com/largest-data-centers-in-the-world/
6th largest data center in the world by physical size, and it is the only one on this list explictly designated for 'national security'.
The NSA has taps on every single major trunk line going in or out of the US, they coordinate with every major US-based ISP, every major software provider, data center operator.
They have so much archived data that their actual problem is figuring out how to search through it efficiently... and that is a big thing that Palantir does, that was kinda their whole intitial... thing, as a company.
I came here to make this comment less cogently. You have it exactly.
Now, does it violate US law and multiple Executive Orders to search the database to get dirt on US Citizens and use it against their election campaign? Yes. Yes it does. But this administration thinks laws are for sissies.
And this was always the problem of building the panopticon, everyone justified doing it by saying 'well, its fine so long as the good guys are in charge', and 'we have to stop the terrorists, 9/11 Never Again'.
This is why the panopticon system is destroyed by Lucius Fox after using it to find the Joker in the Dark Knight.
The system itself is too dangerous to be allowed to exist in a world of flawed humans, and it will eventually be wielded by those least morally qualified to wield it.
Fuck, this is also basically analagous to the Lord of the Rings... Frodo is the hero for destroying the One Ring, not wielding it, because it literally corrupts you with its literally evil power.
God damnit.
I'm still a bit skeptical Palantir would expose this capability over a Senate race which hasn't even gotten through primaries. I haven't looked into it that much, but I think it's far more likely there's something on the accouny which makes it easy to identify, and someone this dude knows figured it out before he deleted that account.
Opposition research isn't really illegal, there's no confirmation that anything from Palantir was actually used, and it's trivially easy for any layperson to view deleted reddit comments-- to be perfectly honest in this specific case I just don't think there was anything really untoward
When people were up in arms about China getting data from TikTok, I wondered if they had any idea of what the NSA does.
When that was going on, the whole time I was saying that if we ban Tiktok for data security reasons, we should ban Facebook and Instagram for exactly the same reason, and yes, we should ban basically all social media at this point, its all a perfect spying machine, one you get addicted to, beyond hiding in plain sight...
Of course, that's extremely unlikely to happen... but it is an actually consistent position.
Fuckers should help me restore my old academic portfolio then. Might as well put living in a dystopian surveillance state to helpful use.
It seems like these sorts of things can be used against you, but whenever it might actually benefit you they always come up short.
I was screaming this when COVID first hit.
Palantir is an evil company.
This was pretty evident the second they named their company over the tool used by The Dark Lord Sauron and Saruman to spy on the actions of others from Lord of the Rings.
Pretty sure they also have access to banned Reddit accounts whose users can no longer access their history to know what they will be judged and profiled for, too.
Just assume every social network either allows this directly or enables a third party to do it, Lemmy specially.
Lemmy is explicitly public. I don't think that's much of a stretch.
Remimds me of when everyone was deleting their posts around the API blackout and suddenly the next day it was like Reddit did a restore from checkpoint and all of the edited posts and deleted posts came right back. I for one had to run the script that replaced then delete my posts twice, but that's besides the point.
Same, but then a bunch of mine popped up again sometime in the last few months. Not exactly sure when, and it wasn’t all of them.
I didn’t run the replace script tho, I wish I would’ve.
Did they actually come back or did a bunch of comments not show up in your profile because the subs were private so they didn't get deleted, then they reappeared when the subs reopened? I thought some of mine were restored too, but it was a combination of that and the tool I used only hitting the most recent 1000.
Indeed, replacing the posts with irrelevant jibberish was the way
What script is this?
I used this in the past, not sure itll still work, it worked with old.reddit a few years back
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1870-delete-all-reddit-comments/code
there's otherones that edit comments as opposed to deleting them, either way reddit keeps a copy, just fyi
Yes I too can use web.archive.org
Sure, but it's also very likely that reddit is still retaining all posts even "deleted" ones in their database. I can go look at the profiles of people who haven't used their accounts in 12 years. I can use Arctic Shift to view posts and comments that users have deleted themselves... even from deleted accounts! All the data is still there. That's why a few years ago when people were deleting accounts it was widely suggested to edit every comment into gibberish before deletion, so the final edit in the database would be worthless. I remember when there were extension tools to do it like NukeReddit that changed everything to gibberish and then deleted it for you all automatically. Those tools had stopped working by the time the exodus due to the API changes happened.
Anyway, I wouldn't past that fucking pile of shit Steve Huffman to just be passing it off to Palantir because he's such a little bitch.
I don't think people realize that our user information is automatically documented on a not-so regular basis. (By the web archive crawler) I've been curious about Lemmy, but I haven't seen us on there much, lol. I don't think we're important enough, THANKFULLY.
I follow the lesser evil approach. I'm further away socially, culturally, and politically from the Chinese so all my tech is Chinese. Them having my data is less dangerous to me than just letting the redneck reich get it.
As a software engineer I was a little shocked when I learned our company treats “Delete” buttons as a means to toggle Archived = 1 in the DB. Nothing is actually deleted. Sure we will anonymise the data after a certain time to be GDPR compliant but it would be trivial I guess to actually link that back to people.
I'm pretty sure GDPR requires websites to abide to user requests to delete their data. You may wish to review that with your company.
The GDPR applies to data pertaining to an identifiable person. Anonymised data is more or less equivalent to deleted data as far as the regulation is concerned. Source: I was a DPO for 5 years.
The org i used to work for had to develop a special process to delete user data upon request, it was not an easy process in dynamics365
if you want something deleted you best destroy the hard disk yourself lol
There's no independent audit for GDPR compliance so the only way to know would be if someone whistleblows. There are also so many loopholes that allows to keep the data like "to prevent further abuse" or "some legal reason".
So if reddit bans your account they can keep all data and you can't do anything about it even with GDPR.
My current workplace doesn't have for foresight to do that. Delete fully deletes immediately and without confirmation. Oh and the backups have been broken for years
On the upside, recent changes in leadership and on the team made it so we finally have the political will and talent in the right places to actually put effort into fixing backups but they have a lot of technical debt to sift through in fixing the last folks' mistakes and oversights
That's basically how deleting data from a hard drive works too.
Not quite, deletion from a hard drive also unflags the space the data was located at as being in use, so it will be overwritten eventually so long as the drive continues to have things written to it. Simply flagging something as being archived means that information will remain on the server indefinitely, the exact opposite of what is intended by a delete button.
It'd work if it was encrypted and you threw away the encryption key on delete
Yup, data archival. Now imagine this future: right now, encrypted data transfers may be wire-tapped and stored. When quantum computers are available, all that traffic will be decryptable. This includes pretty much all general HTTPS traffic since TLS mostly uses ECDHE for key exchange which isn't quantum secure.
I bet nation state actors are recording everything they can.
Damn, dude... that's insane and I'm surprised it's never occurred to me.
I've had the realization before as I realize that maybe my password database will eventually be easily cracked... but there's no reason it cannot apply to data in transit as well, as long as someone is recording it.
You don't need AI for this, just a ton of money for storage and either tolerance for a slow query (like 15-20 minutes) or an engineer who knows what they're doing in search.
Sure. As far as I can tell Palantir sells the software that police, ICE and the military use to Face ID suspects, including "aliens" and Osama Bin Laden (way back when that happened).
Once you scan your face data and post it online, you can assume security agencies (Palantir clients) load it into Palantir software to complete your profile. Privacy is dead.
There are dedicated tools, called Social Listening tools that do just these. Some examples are Brandwatch, Sprinklr, Talkwalker and Meltwater.
Not just Palantir, anyone and everyone is using these tools. From consumer companies to investment banks to your favourite content creator is using some kind of social listening to stay on top of trends and understand how you behave.
Reddit and Twitter are two social platforms that provide the most data openly and freely, and in reddit's case you can get a lot of historical data without extra cost.
Your favourite candle brand, and your favourite outdoor clothing company and protein shake company is part of your favourite reddit community listening to what you're talking about. They know if you like energy drinks, you might light heavily scented bath soaps too.
Deleted posts show up on these platforms quite often but when you click on them to go to reddit or twitter you'll get a not found or deleted page.
PS: I've been working in social listening for last 8 years.
Why are you doing evil work..? Like... Why develop these tools that will so obviously be used to worsen our lives?
Gotta eat. Blame the system that creates this incentive not some individual wageslave
I've been working mostly on the analysis side of things, currently I do this for a consumer goods company.
And yes I do it to make a living. Got hired as an analyst in this field out of MBA and stayed in this. Also being chronically online and familiar with social networks helped.
Could you stop enabling the police state, please?
I wish lmao. But there are tons of data companies selling all kinds of data on people to whoever will pay them for it. Me working for identifying trends or what flavour of green tea is popular are less harmful use cases.
What we need is regulation to reign in big tech. These API licenses are expensive and I suspect is a big reason why Reddit ended free data sharing (which led to death of third party reddit clients).
'Social Listening' is uh, one way to brand 'corporate surveillance panopticon', I guess hahah!
Oh god I'm so glad I am an ex-corpo, the stupid fucking lingo and buzzwords alone should be enough to make most people realize they are in a cult, but I guess not.
It's like none of you have heard of Edward Snowden.
It hasn't been on tiktok lately, so, correct, they have not.
That traitorous cunt who is the reason russia got so much influence in the US 2016 elections? Never heard of him.
OP is learning about archive.org for the first time?
Anything ever posted online can be archived and searched later. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to cross reference publicly available sources along with subpoenaed data.
I think even Facebook said years ago it's less taxing on the systems to unlink content rather than delete it.
I'm sure Palantir would help Democrats find stuff on NAZIs ... right ? Right ?
The guy in the photo with the nazi tattoo is a democrat lol
Literally nothing points to Palantir so far according to that post, so your title is just misinformation...
Sources claim that [...] tools, POSSIBLY including Palantir OR SIMILAR [...] MAY have been used ...
Everyone from the sources to the poster are just guessing and speculating.
I dont doubt that its real, but at this point its just made up nonsense to claim it like this.
Ah, but "Platner" and "Palantir" have most of the same letters!
Agreed, this would be a really weird way for a state threat actor to reveal an otherwise pretty sensitive capability. I assume there's something on the account which clearly links him to it and someone he knows recently remembered they know his old account name.
Q. uell. Sur....... prise ~
Imagine thinking your privacy is above profit where capitalism rules lmao
You muricas are too dumb to understand that nothing has more power than money on a profit driven society like yours, like the ones your stupid elite forced upon every country's throat as they could
Your "market freedom" is actually money dictatorship, EUA is not a free country
TIL America is the only capitalist country
No! Read my comment again, it's the only country that bomb other countries that do not want to participate in this prehistoric system
For some time now, I have written stuff on the internet under the assumption that one day, my identity will be publicly tied to everything I wrote. Surely in the future it will be easy to give an example of my writing to an AI bot, perhaps combined with some facts about my life, and the bot would be able to find anonymous posts that were likely written by me, across the internet.
So like internet archive? oooo spooky
The scary dystopian part is the ability to work out that the account belonged to someone who hadn't used it for a decade rather than just that they could see what had been posted. The Internet Archive doesn't let you ask it what someone's Digg username was.
"Deleted"
For as long as Reddit has been available there have been places that would scrape it and mirror deleted/edited comments. I don't remember what any of them are so people would use them all the time to figure out what someone said before they were banned.
There were also sites that you could put in a username and it would give you a pretty in depth summary of the person's location and facts about them.
What's stopping them from lying about this? They lie about literally everything, why should anyone believe them about anything at all?
Lying that they have the Reddit comments that they showed everyone?
Anyway, Reddit is one of the most scraped sites on the internet. Be sure that everyone who wants an archive of Reddit has an archive of Reddit. Anything you put on the internet is forever.
I don't exactly mean to say this is nothingburger, but it is one of the more boring bits of living in a dystopia and is too low on the list of evil shit Palantir is doing to care that much about.
Hot. Hot, hot, hot.
Convinced we somehow ended up in the darkest timeline.
Just in time for the genocide of free thinkers. Lucky us!
This should come as no surprise. We all knew they were storing everything away in data centers for decades now. Once AI hit the scene it was over. I knew right at that moment they would use it to parse all that information. That's why I stopped using social media in a way that could be used to identify my more violent and anarchistic takes. I'm sure I could still be found out, but I'll not be making it easy for the bastards. Fuck Republicans for fear mongering all of this for my entire life and now cheering for it to be used against their perceived enemies, traitorous cocksuckers.
Hey, this guy over here is hiding 'more violent and anarchisic takes'.
We're not sure what that means so better lock you up just in case. Law Shmaw.
Yet another reason why you shouldn't get nazi tattoos... jfc.
As much as Palantir is an evil organization, the underlying problem is libs constantly supporting fascism.
As an actual "leftist", I don't want nazi military bros as my "representative".
Kinda wild how nobody else mentions this.
What is it with this site and hating "libs" like it feels like Twitter with the Trump goons.
I don’t live in Maine anymore, but his handling of this, and clear stance on other issues important to me, have actually strengthened my willingness to vote for him was I still in the state.
I actually believe him when he says he got it while drunk on a night off with the marines, supposedly not knowing the meaning at the time. He then went on to say he immediately scheduled to cover it because getting it removed would have taken too much time to figure out because Maine doesn’t have any places that do it. Like he wanted that shit no longer visible on his body asap and went out of his way to get it done sooner than later.
Similarly with LGBTQ+ rights. Yeah he said some edgy shit on the Internet a long time ago, but he’s said he’s changed and now aggressively supports queer rights in Maine. Idk, maybe he’ll pull a Fetterman, but I don’t get that vibe.
Even if he is still in the process of fully deconstructing things, he is clearly taking the correct actions in the here and now to further that process.
I grew up with people like him and almost without fail, when I actually sat down and had real conversations with them as adults, they’ve been positive and minds have been changed in all directions.
Blue collar Mainers are some of the first people to hate billionaires, and fiercely support small government, personal freedoms and privacy. This honestly means supporting queer rights in so far as they want the freedom to be themselves too. They have been systematically lied to by a party that doesn’t actually want small government or personal liberties, and many of them have realized that.
We need to be able to welcome these people willing to be educated, and genuinely capable of changing their thinking and their ways. These people are closeted radical leftists. We will need them on board.
He seems to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
Probably the Pushshift archive which is publicly downloadable.
The real enemy inside is the government, not the people.
People need to keep their government under more surveillance than the government does its people.
That’s not Palantir doing it. If you put the data in a MariaDB, you can access it, too. Is not MariaDB the culprit, or the one distributing the data?
Also this is being orchestrated by the DSCC showing that the Democrats still have power and deep state ties, they just use them against left/anti-zionists.
EDIT: Are the downvoters refusing to see that all this came out after Janet Mills jumped in the race and immediately got endorsed by Schumer? It is obviously oppo research by her supporters.
Lmao. Waybackmachine
Edit: woops, other guy said it.
Who's the cute guy?
What I find more concerning is, how did they get his reddit username?
The obvious strong link is reddit+email. Someone could have got into his personal, probably old mailbox, where original registration letters (with r/handle) and notifications still are. I find it more probable, but since government is under MAGA, they could've used some way to ask Huffman if some account matches the mail address.
This is why I resisted attaching emails to reddit accounts for years. Recently subs have started soft banning users without registered emails though, so I started just using throwaways.
Don't you guys have NSA? Just have a contact there and...
At one point it was possible to download every reddit comment ever. I think it was around 10 years ago I had a copy of that. I can't remember if it was from reddit directly or from some third party with scrapers. I recall the dataset being free... but it might have been free for me because I had an academic justification? Really don't recall.
Anyways, point being that you're delusional if you think anything you post online ever goes away. Secondly, you can be much less than palentir and have "deleted reddit account comments". Anyone can get them.
What’s posted to the internet, STAYS on the internet. Forever. Stay safe friens
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