
Palantir blocked China’s CDH Investments from buying stock, says a lawsuit - pratap103
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-18/at-peter-thiel-s-palantir-allegations-of-theft-and-deception
======
jacquesm
There is something very much not right about a shareholder of a company like
Palantir trying to sell their stake to a Chinese shareholder. That would give
the Chinese fractional ownership of all the software and data that Palantir
holds and processes, not much good could come of that.

~~~
unityByFreedom
I don't think we have the details to paint one side worse than the other.

Also don't see why a Chinese company can't buy shares in a company. Financial
products, just like other products, are purchasable by any nationality.

If Palantir is doing something that risks national security then they ought to
work with the government on that. I don't think we know enough about Palantir
to make a judgement there.

~~~
jacquesm
> I don't think we have the details to paint one side worse than the other.

Are you kidding?

By any measure that is available China is a country that is inferior to a vast
chunk of the world when it comes to civil liberties and political freedom.

Palantir or a substantial portion of it in the hands of the Chinese (and, by
extension in the hands of the Chinese authorities, direct or indirect) is
something that you simply should not want.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> By any measure that is available China is a country that is inferior to a
> vast chunk of the world when it comes to civil liberties and political
> freedom.

Seriously? What does that have to do with investing in the stock market?

Palantir isn't the Manhattan Project. Plus, the US is on friendly terms with
China. Most of our computer hardware is made there. I don't see how Chinese
investing in Palantir somehow hurts our national security. No need to spread
FUD or build walls in the stock market.

Your comments seem to be in line with Thiel and Trump, who fear other
countries, so I can see where you're coming from, I just think it's 1950's
style thinking and not reflective of 2017 reality.

~~~
jacquesm
> Palantir isn't the Manhattan Project.

It isn't Coca Cola either.

------
dude01
tldr: Investor lawsuit with private company Palantir. Title is misleading. Not
very interesting article.

~~~
tyingq
Agreed. The article also shoves Peter Thiel's name into the title for unknown
reasons.

~~~
jacquesm
It's 'Thiel', and he's the chairman, so it's not like we don't know why that
name is there.

~~~
tyingq
He isn't a particularly central figure in the story. It's there, I suppose, to
leverage animosity.

~~~
jacquesm
No more than mentioning any other CEO in an article about their business
would. What is it about Peter Thiel that you feel would raise animosity?

It's just a statement of fact.

~~~
tyingq
He's not the CEO.

>What is it about Peter Thiel that you feel would raise animosity?

The article makes sure to highlight that for anyone that might have missed it
:) _" It’s well-positioned to cash in on more government work thanks to
Thiel’s relationship with President Donald Trump."_

Edit: Mentioned, sure. In the article title when he's not central to the
story? Click bait.

~~~
jacquesm
No, he's the chairman. Like John Thompson for MS and so on. Regardless, Thiel
and Palantir are joined at the hip, so expect the one to be mentioned
alongside the other without attributing it immediately to malicious intent.

------
bane
It's almost like the company is allergic to receiving external market
validation of its claimed valuation. They're happy to hold internal company
"liquidation events" where employees can sell to employees, and take on
massive yearly fund raising events to hush hush funds, but they never seem to
want to let on in any public way what they're actually worth on the real
market.

------
saycheese
At the point a single venture is worth billions, they should be required to
disclose their core financials, stockholders, holders, risks, etc.

~~~
valuearb
This is problematic. Who gets to say it's worth billions? Private appraisals
are notoriously inaccurate and can be easily biased.

Who should they disclose this information to? Shareholders can negotiate this
right when they make their investment, just as founders can. Why should
someone who isn't an owner have access to private information about someone
elses business?

Lets say you and a friend develop an innovative new startup (let's call it
"Instawham"). Some friends join you and very quickly you become successful
enough to have a bunch of customers and strong VC funding, but you are still a
small company with a few dozen employees. You are a forward thinking CEO so
you share information about the business with all of your employees, but
caution them it's all proprietary and that sharing with competitors could hurt
the business, so you are confident they won't share.

A big company, say Facebook, offers to buy you for a few billion dollars. But
besides not wanting to work for Zuckerberg, you think they are just trying to
get access to your financials and business plans to compete with you and will
pull the offer as soon as you disclose. So you say no.

Now TechCrunch approaches you, and reminds you that by the newly passed
"saycheese law" any multibillion dollar valued startup must release it's
financials, shareholder lists, risk assessments, etc. They demand all of that
information so they can publish it and sue you when you decline. Your lawyer
tells you because of "saycheese law" you will lose, so you turn it over and
Facebook launches their competitor soon after the TechCrunch article.

------
clevernapkins
I'm confused. Seems like they have been trying to sell shares directly to
parties in order to use their preferred agreements in regards to financial
disclosures and annual reports? Yet if they're looking into an IPO they would
be obliged to do that exact thing right?

------
hendzen
If you resist going public for over a decade despite doing billions in revenue
you are going to have investors who are upset about their inability to cash
out.

------
mhneu
In terms of Palantir's activities and impact on society: Palantir is selling
out to authoritarians. Not a company we should be very proud of.

[http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-adviser-peter-thiels-
palantir-t...](http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-adviser-peter-thiels-palantir-
technologies-aid-ice-immigration-raids-using-2501431)

Trump Adviser Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies To Aid ICE In Immigration
Raids Using Surveillance And Data Analysis

~~~
saltyworker
Alternate Title:

Trump Adviser Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies To Aid ICE in enforcing
Country's Immigration Statutes Using Data Analysis & Available Metadata

~~~
hwillis
So... Should Google be reporting the addresses of people who search for drugs?
Should Facebook be informing the TSA about people's religion? Do you really
want corporations spying on you for the government even more than they
currently do?

~~~
jimmywanger
> Should Google be reporting the addresses of people who search for drugs?
> Should Facebook be informing the TSA about people's religion?

This is a false equivalence, as searching for drugs is not actually illegal,
nor is believing in a certain faith.

A better analogy would be "Should Google be reporting the addresses of people
who are distributing child pornography? Should Facebook be informing the TSA
of people who are planning to bomb a plane?" In both cases, the answers is
yes, and they are almost legally obligated to if they have clear evidence of
wrong-doing.

~~~
valuearb
Yea the reality is should Google report the addresses of people googling for
"sexy teens"? Should Facebook inform the TSA of people who watch plane
explosion videos? Whatif their profiles indicate they are Muslims?

Very very rarely does someone type into their browser that they want to rape a
child, or share on Facebook their plans to bomb a plane. Instead the
authorities make inferences, inferences that often lead to the harassment,
even prosecution, of innocent people.

~~~
jimmywanger
I guess you missed the main point, which is "false equivalence". The two
examples you're using have absolutely no bearing on this case.

This is a technology licensing case. Would you be angry at Google for
licensing its search technology to help run background checks on childcare
providers? Would you care if Facebook licensed its social graph technology to
see if you should be eligible for a drivers' license based on your medical
history?

~~~
valuearb
I don't think you understand "false equivalence". You responded to someone
concerned about corporations turning people into the government because of
things in their private web histories.

Your response was they should, if those people were clearly committing crimes.

My response was, it's very rarely clear whether some is committing a crime or
not from their web history, and that companies can be easily coerced into
sharing information that is just indicative of a possible crime, which can
lead to innocent people being harassed or charged.

Specifically thousands of crimes a day (if not more) are committed by Facebook
users, and some of those users leave traces of those crimes on Facebook.
Facebook is heavily incented to help turn in those criminals to show they are
good corporate citizens, and to head off extensive regulation and even civil
penalties that could be created by grand standing lawmakers. Facebook has
little to no incentive to protect my rights.

Now my kid posts "I love weed" on their FB profile, and it's caught the
massive dragnet of data being turned over to authorities every day from
Facebook. Police get a warrant, bust down my door, and arrest my child if they
find weed in their room. If my kid had a couple ounces of pot and the cops
think I'm a jerk, they may seize my home.

[http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust-
hous...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust-house-
seizure/)

If they don't find weed but find painkillers in my wife's purse not
accompanied by her legal prescription for them, they will arrest her to
justify the raid.

Or a dozen other bad things could happen, like they could shoot my barking 60
lb dog (who has never bitten anyone in her life), or worse.

So no, I don't want web service providers who have access to my personal
information sharing that information with law enforcement. The police can do
real police work to catch real criminals, most of their time they seem to
abuse the constitution to arrest people for victimless crimes, I don't think
they need more tools for that.

~~~
jimmywanger
> So no, I don't want web service providers

Thanks for proving the example false equivalence. Palantir is not a service
provider to you, it is a data analysis company.

If Google or Facebook performed data mining on data it owned, that'd be one
thing. Palantir is providing tools that analyze publicly available
information.

> Or a dozen other bad things could happen

Yes, that's life. At any point any bad things can happen that's out of your
control.

If somebody in your family posted "I love weed" on a public billboard, you
might expect increased police attention.

Extrapolating a dead dog and painkiller arrests (both vanishingly rare events)
are hysterical statements not based in fact.

~~~
valuearb
No knock warrants are not "vanishing rare events" and having nervous cops
point weapons at you is not pleasant. And people get arrested for prescription
drug abuse all the time, and plocue have the "discretion" to arrest you if you
are carrying certain drugs without your prescriptions on you (don't worry if
you work in the DAs office, warning only).

So you might not be concerned about getting trapped in the maw of our now
enormous law enforcement machine, but plenty of people are given virtually
every adult in the US has committed a felony at one point or another because
of one crazy law or another. Not only do I not want Google or Facebook using
automated algorithms to pit me in the maw, I don't want them sharing that data
with Palantir so it can do it either. That gives for Chase Bank, Verizon, etc.

------
raverbashing
The naivety that only western countries with stable histories can afford

Or maybe just a throwaway created by a part interested in the transaction

~~~
dang
Accusations of shilling without evidence aren't allowed here, because they
take the threads into hell. Please don't do that.

Another commenter holding different views from you, or even posting a bad
comment and being wrong, is not evidence of astroturfing or shillage.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20shill&sort=byDate&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20shill&sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13901243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13901243)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
raverbashing
I agree with what you're saying, however the fact that those were throwaway
accounts and the pattern of their answers (not only to me) weigh heavily
towards some kind of coordinated commenting.

I see there are official ways of reporting suspected shilling, at a time where
astroturfing is having an important impact on the real world it's important
that the administration keep these in check in this space.

~~~
dang
You can always construct this kind of argument, and they almost always turn
out to be wrong when investigated, but in the meantime have toxic side
effects. That's why we have to be strict about this.

Most of us are orders of magnitude too quick to interpret our own cognitive
bias as abuse by others (e.g. X seems obvious to me so anyone arguing ~X must
be a shill). This places the threshold for useless, nasty arguments ('you're a
shill. no, you're the shill') dangerously low. Combine that with the evil
catnip power of meta and you get a strain of offtopicness that's especially
malignant.

~~~
raverbashing
Thanks for the explanation.

