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Cool, cool cool cool. Nothing dystopian about that at all.

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[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 124 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zip 45 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago

This "too dangerous to exist" argument is seemingly more true for nuclear technology, but the world recognized the threat and came together to manage it.

I will grant you that database and ability to search it lends itself easily to popular oppression, but it still requires thinking, breathing humans to do the oppressing.

Most technology is not dangerous without psychopaths in power, and damn near everything is dangerous with psychopaths in power.

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[-] Dragonstaff@leminal.space 23 points 1 week ago

When people were up in arms about China getting data from TikTok, I wondered if they had any idea of what the NSA does.

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] LodeMike@lemmy.today 96 points 1 week ago

Yes I too can use web.archive.org

[-] SnotFlickerman 68 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

i'm glad to have deleted my account that way before it was cool. fuck reddit.

[-] Xanthrax@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That's not how it works. I'll throw myself under the bus for you. Look up "reddit.com/u/1831942" on the web archive. (This is NOT a plug) You can see random archives (non-personal) of my profile. It doesn't matter if you deleted it. It sucks that the info is floating out there. Also, fuck reddit.

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[-] Xanthrax@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

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[-] Saarth@lemmy.world 55 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] HasturInYellow@lemmy.world 44 points 1 week ago

Why are you doing evil work..? Like... Why develop these tools that will so obviously be used to worsen our lives?

[-] False@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Gotta eat. Blame the system that creates this incentive not some individual wageslave

[-] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 week ago

Yes, but you can choose how to earn ypur living. It is unlikely they cannot do amy other job.

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[-] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 35 points 1 week ago

Could you stop enabling the police state, please?

[-] Saarth@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

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).

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

'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.

[-] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago
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[-] Quexotic@infosec.pub 54 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] shaggyb@lemmy.world 51 points 1 week ago

It's like none of you have heard of Edward Snowden.

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago

It hasn't been on tiktok lately, so, correct, they have not.

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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.

[-] ranzispa@mander.xyz 24 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 42 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] dontpanic 10 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 40 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Lemmy is explicitly public. I don't think that's much of a stretch.

[-] scathliath@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 1 week ago

Fuckers should help me restore my old academic portfolio then. Might as well put living in a dystopian surveillance state to helpful use.

[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 28 points 1 week ago

It seems like these sorts of things can be used against you, but whenever it might actually benefit you they always come up short.

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[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

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[-] WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] eve@evecodes.com 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

What’s posted to the internet, STAYS on the internet. Forever. Stay safe friens

[-] eveskeets@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago
[-] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 22 points 1 week ago

I'm sure Palantir would help Democrats find stuff on NAZIs ... right ? Right ?

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[-] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 11 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago
[-] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

Oh great the second I become president my DeviantArt is getting leaked

[-] CovfefeKills@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

So like internet archive? oooo spooky

[-] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

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.

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[-] Angelevo@feddit.nl 8 points 1 week ago

Q. uell. Sur....... prise ~

[-] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Palantir is an evil company.

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[-] AlexLost@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

What's stopping them from lying about this? They lie about literally everything, why should anyone believe them about anything at all?

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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
807 points (100.0% liked)

A Boring Dystopia

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