Like everyone else, I am very skeptical that it is somehow related, for several reasons.
- He is just a small time streamer, I didn't watch his videos but it looks like typical clickbait content playing on people's paranoia. Why would Palantir care about it?
- I didn't watch the videos in question, but I suppose that he says that Palentir is evil because it is used by police forces to attack poor migrants, that kind of thing. Not only he is saying what everyone is saying, but it may be good advertising for Palantir, as it shows that they are good at their (evil) job.
- Streisand effect, I am sure that even the idiots at Palantir know that it may not be a good idea to give attention to a streamer who annoys them.
- Speaking of attention, it is highly likely that the streamer in question was unbanked for a completely unrelated reason but saw the opportunity to make buzz, and it seems to be working!
- There seem to be no further evidence connecting the two.
Simple.. because both Tiel and Palantir's CEO are super weirdos that live under the "Atlas shrugged" way of life and are basically insecure man childs. History confirms this...
Why the F are so many hn'rs defending these billionaire creeps?
Zero indication that these things are related in any way.
The streamer is a self-admitted basket case who does not “believe in coincidences”. As far as weird internet belief systems go, this one seems even a bit weirder than people who refuse to believe in a somewhat spherical earth.
>What indication would there be that the two are related? Do you expect them to write an email specifically stating that was the reason?
I'd want to see a pattern of multiple critics being banned. In the same video he admits that neobanks have a history of banning clients arbitrarily for seemingly no reason. Just a few months ago there was a story of someone being banned from wise for seemingly dumb reasons made it to the front page[1], so it's certainly possible for people to get banned because of pure incompetence. Therefore you'd expect a base rate of Palantir/Thiel critics banned from pure coincidence alone.
>For what it's worth, that neobank received funding from his company, which definitely raises the odds of the two being related.
Right, just like you can come up with some spurious relationships from people being banned from wise, like the CEO hating pineapple on pizza (example, no idea whether he actually does) and the person being banned liking pineapple on pizza.
> So it's cool if one person gets deplatformed, as long as it's not a pattern? Odd choice if you ask me.
No, it's not cool even if it's just one person. The point is that you should absolutely be upset at the bank for arbitrarily banning someone for no reason, but not at Peter Thiel or Palantir, since it being just one non-high-profile critic means there's no good reason to think they had anything to do with it.
Let me re-iterate this one more time: he invested in Qonto, he invested in Wise. Therefore, whether the actual reason is incompetence or a personal vendetta or both, he deserves some of the blame. He is the one that funded them. He is the reason they exist, as (in)competent as they are.
Shifting the blame to "incompetence" does not absolve him of any guilt, he is equally to blame for that as well.
It's extremely improbable that a random critique of Thiel led to one of the many many many companies he invests in banning this guy. It's not impossible, but - Occam's razor, it's not the simplest assumption.
Your initial post suggested that we should assume that there is a link; now you're backing up to "Thiel takes some blame from bad actions by companies he invests in," which is a much weaker but more defensible claim.
Was I the one to shift the conversation into "incompetence" or did someone else do that thinking it absolves Thiel of any blame (which, as I've proven, it doesn't)?
We can go back to my original claim, but my stance would remain the same as it did it in my first comment: if on the one side of the argument we have a company directly funded by Thiel and on the other side we have literally anyone else, I personally don't need any evidence to believe that other side because I am well familiar with who Thiel is.
I don't think it's fair to blame an investor who's not the founder and has no executive/managerial control of a company for what that company does. Do you have a retirement account that invests in the S&P 500? Should you be responsible for the decisions all of the companies in it make?
It raises the odds I suppose, but through what mechanism would something like this even work? Like, the story would have to be:
* Peter Thiel, a man who does not speak French, discovers that a French streamer is saying mean things about Palantir. Lots of people say mean things about Palantir, since they do so many bad things, but this particular criticism is just so cutting Thiel feels he has to do something about it.
* He searches through every investment he's ever made, singling out all the French ones, and sends their executive teams an email saying that this one specific French guy sucks and they shouldn't do business with him.
* The executive team at Qonto, a profitable company with 600,000 customers and almost €500M in annual revenue, receives the message and decides that they'd like to help one of their dozens of investors with his personal revenge campaign.
It's not 100% impossible, but it's so implausible I don't think it's reasonable to believe based on a coincidence.
Yeah, even with the usual guidance around editorializing headlines and the inherent difficulty in trying to summarize a tweet into a headline-sized snippet, it's worth noting that the title on this comment thread itself doesn't even directly claim any connection. Someone could just as easily state "French streamer Unbanked by Qonoto after eating a salami and cheese sandwich", and if that's what they ate for lunch the day before, it would be equally accurate but unlikely to be considered noteworthy.
"Not believing in coincidences" is a standard canned quip, a meme of sorts, for just about any internet conspiracy nut, used selectively to defend their baseless theories but not actually a principle they apply literally to everything (unless they have profound schizophrenia I guess.)
If banks have to insert themselves into every transaction (cash is banned for larger transactions), then it follows that debanking should be viewed as a legal instrument of punishment, and should only be allowed following a violation of the law, and subject to the usual due process like fines or prison sentences. Anything else is a significant infringement on personal freedom.
Also, "freezing" the funds without a court judgement or the opportunity of retrieving them is effectively theft. If you didn't pay the parking fees on my property for a couple days, it's not legal for me to just boot or chain it or hide it somewhere (at least in the US), and I think the same should go here.
There are now quite a few cases in Europe where the EU or local govs been de-banking individuals. No court, no judge needed. Much more efficient way to shut down critics. We ain't need no people who delegitimize those in power.
Can we have a link? In France, at most you can get your account restricted (can't go into deficit and a sum is blocked) until the issue is resolved (99% because of unpaid taxes, sometimes the money is blocked by a judge until a judgement is passed). It's weird if the EU don't have a standard.
Look at what happened to Jacques Baud because he criticized the EU on the Ukranian war and is now considered a "pro-russia" and propagating "disinformation". [1]
I read what he wrote ("L’art de la guerre russe, comment l’Occident a conduit l’Ukraine à l’échec"), you can download it temporarily here : [2].
His book is absolutely not pro-russia nor pro-EU.
The only debanking cases I've been aware of were the US putting pressure on judges from the International Court and a special appointee of the UN for Palestine.
>It seems pretty in character and it's not like there is another more plausible reason being offered.
In character of what, that Thiel is a mustache twirling villain? Did other companies backed by him have a history of banning his critics?
>It seems pretty in character and it's not like there is another more plausible reason being offered.
By his own admission, neobanks have a history of banning clients arbitrarily without recourse. My guess it's run of the mill incompetence, not oppressing Thiel's critics.
Gawker was a well known website with 23 million visit per month, and a Wikipedia page. This guy has 44k subscribers and no Wikipedia page. It's a stretch to go from "Thiel had a vendetta against Gawker" to "Thiel had a vendetta against this guy".
I mean it's pretty common these days to see that billionaires can be thin skinned little twerps that hold a vendetta. Elon Musk is the biggest example of one that shows up and talks shit when someone tries to hurt his feefees.
Now, if you're powerful but not quite as dumb as Elon can be socially, you're not going to do the work yourself. You'll have a social media management team that takes care of the work for you.
> They are lying to you. They keep repeating that "it's your money". It's false. It’s only a temporary access right that the system can take away from you with one click.
> I dared to criticize Palantir. A few days later, @getqonto
deactivated my card, closed my account and blocked my funds. Without a word. I was erased, and I don’t believe in coincidences.
> When a "French unicorn" is funded by Peter Thiel’s millions, freedom of speech becomes a risk. Who really holds the switch to your life?
In my country (Italy) Visione TV had bank account frozen for putting on a webtv a Journalist that lived in DonBass during 2014-2018 period speking about local people killed by Ucranians.The decision came from Massimiliano Coccia, husband of Pina Picierno ( member of the European Parliament), this append also to Frédéric Baldan and a lot of other people every day, so I'dont wonder it its true.
Visione TV is a mouthpiece of the Russian propaganda machine. The account being frozen was most likely the bank doing its due diligence due to the sanctions on Russia.
- He is just a small time streamer, I didn't watch his videos but it looks like typical clickbait content playing on people's paranoia. Why would Palantir care about it?
- I didn't watch the videos in question, but I suppose that he says that Palentir is evil because it is used by police forces to attack poor migrants, that kind of thing. Not only he is saying what everyone is saying, but it may be good advertising for Palantir, as it shows that they are good at their (evil) job.
- Streisand effect, I am sure that even the idiots at Palantir know that it may not be a good idea to give attention to a streamer who annoys them.
- Speaking of attention, it is highly likely that the streamer in question was unbanked for a completely unrelated reason but saw the opportunity to make buzz, and it seems to be working!
- There seem to be no further evidence connecting the two.
Why the F are so many hn'rs defending these billionaire creeps?
The streamer is a self-admitted basket case who does not “believe in coincidences”. As far as weird internet belief systems go, this one seems even a bit weirder than people who refuse to believe in a somewhat spherical earth.
For what it's worth, that neobank received funding from his company, which definitely raises the odds of the two being related.
I'd want to see a pattern of multiple critics being banned. In the same video he admits that neobanks have a history of banning clients arbitrarily for seemingly no reason. Just a few months ago there was a story of someone being banned from wise for seemingly dumb reasons made it to the front page[1], so it's certainly possible for people to get banned because of pure incompetence. Therefore you'd expect a base rate of Palantir/Thiel critics banned from pure coincidence alone.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45766253
>For what it's worth, that neobank received funding from his company, which definitely raises the odds of the two being related.
Right, just like you can come up with some spurious relationships from people being banned from wise, like the CEO hating pineapple on pizza (example, no idea whether he actually does) and the person being banned liking pineapple on pizza.
So it's cool if one person gets deplatformed, as long as it's not a pattern? Odd choice if you ask me.
Personally if one side is financially backed by someone as insane as Thiel, I tend to need very little evidence from the other side to believe it.
For what it's worth Wise was also funded by Thiel, so he'd be somewhat to blame (not fully, of course) for that incompetence as well.
No, it's not cool even if it's just one person. The point is that you should absolutely be upset at the bank for arbitrarily banning someone for no reason, but not at Peter Thiel or Palantir, since it being just one non-high-profile critic means there's no good reason to think they had anything to do with it.
Shifting the blame to "incompetence" does not absolve him of any guilt, he is equally to blame for that as well.
Your initial post suggested that we should assume that there is a link; now you're backing up to "Thiel takes some blame from bad actions by companies he invests in," which is a much weaker but more defensible claim.
We can go back to my original claim, but my stance would remain the same as it did it in my first comment: if on the one side of the argument we have a company directly funded by Thiel and on the other side we have literally anyone else, I personally don't need any evidence to believe that other side because I am well familiar with who Thiel is.
* Peter Thiel, a man who does not speak French, discovers that a French streamer is saying mean things about Palantir. Lots of people say mean things about Palantir, since they do so many bad things, but this particular criticism is just so cutting Thiel feels he has to do something about it.
* He searches through every investment he's ever made, singling out all the French ones, and sends their executive teams an email saying that this one specific French guy sucks and they shouldn't do business with him.
* The executive team at Qonto, a profitable company with 600,000 customers and almost €500M in annual revenue, receives the message and decides that they'd like to help one of their dozens of investors with his personal revenge campaign.
It's not 100% impossible, but it's so implausible I don't think it's reasonable to believe based on a coincidence.
Then, we would need to understand what his actual criticism was. Have other people made similar criticisms and faced de-banking?
Then, we would need to understand his other activities, and whether they could have led to a de-banking (if he was in fact de-banked).
It should be against the law to privately retaliate like this.
Also, "freezing" the funds without a court judgement or the opportunity of retrieving them is effectively theft. If you didn't pay the parking fees on my property for a couple days, it's not legal for me to just boot or chain it or hide it somewhere (at least in the US), and I think the same should go here.
I read what he wrote ("L’art de la guerre russe, comment l’Occident a conduit l’Ukraine à l’échec"), you can download it temporarily here : [2]. His book is absolutely not pro-russia nor pro-EU.
[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/former-swiss-intelligen...
[2] https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/0117e2b4-8e70-4343-8097-7bfe...
The only debanking cases I've been aware of were the US putting pressure on judges from the International Court and a special appointee of the UN for Palestine.
It seems pretty in character and it's not like there is another more plausible reason being offered.
In character of what, that Thiel is a mustache twirling villain? Did other companies backed by him have a history of banning his critics?
>It seems pretty in character and it's not like there is another more plausible reason being offered.
By his own admission, neobanks have a history of banning clients arbitrarily without recourse. My guess it's run of the mill incompetence, not oppressing Thiel's critics.
Not just neobanks, sadly. Even old-fashioned banks like Chase do so with alarming regularity.
I mean, yes? You don't amass billions of dollars with subtlety?
[1] https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.h...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palanti...
(not that I think TFA here is very likely to be true)
Well, yes, exactly. Sorry it's that simple & unsatisfying but it absolutely is.
I mean it's pretty common these days to see that billionaires can be thin skinned little twerps that hold a vendetta. Elon Musk is the biggest example of one that shows up and talks shit when someone tries to hurt his feefees.
Now, if you're powerful but not quite as dumb as Elon can be socially, you're not going to do the work yourself. You'll have a social media management team that takes care of the work for you.
> They are lying to you. They keep repeating that "it's your money". It's false. It’s only a temporary access right that the system can take away from you with one click.
> I dared to criticize Palantir. A few days later, @getqonto deactivated my card, closed my account and blocked my funds. Without a word. I was erased, and I don’t believe in coincidences.
> When a "French unicorn" is funded by Peter Thiel’s millions, freedom of speech becomes a risk. Who really holds the switch to your life?