>Discord have belatedly confirmed that they're working with Persona, an identity detection firm backed by a fund directed by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, as part of Discord's new global age verification system rollout.
>As PCGamer note, Persona's lead investors during two recent rounds of venture capital funding were Founders Fund, who valued them at $1.5 billion in 2021. The Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2020.
>Palantir have, among other things, worked extensively with the USA's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, [...]
The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to Palantir or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Thiel, but is there any evidence for this? For instance, is Thiel known for meddling in the affairs of the companies his fund invests in, or pushing them together for collabs like what Musk does (eg. with x/x.ai/spacex)?
I think it's prudent to assume that these companies are selling your information to anyone with two nickels to rub together, regardless of which tech celebrities they are linked to.
It doesn't matter if he's known to meddle in the affairs of the companies in which he owns equity stakes. Owning the stake means he could meddle.
Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. Try it:
"The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to [one of Satan's companies] or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Satan"
So for anyone who cares about PR at all, the immediate instinct upon discovering you might be linked them is to reverse course and apologize profusely to your users.
> Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. [...]
Which is very funny and ironic given Thiel's weird ass personal beliefs.
The irony is not lost on me. Thiel's political activism on the side of people who will immediately give him the Alan Turing treatment the first chance they get is a howler for the ages.
Well, the privacy darling Flock was from the YC 2017 summer batch, so I think it's already known what VCs think about ethics if it can make good money.
Hint, it's optional.
(And while I'm not saying for eg PG is personally an anti privacy guy, it's impossible not to hold YC leadership accountable for aiding these cos, or at least looking away.)
One big difference is that Discord literally told people they were going to be using their data for a Theil backed experiment. That's a lot different than the possibility that a company might send your data.
That being said, no, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if Y Combinator sends data to Palantir.
I'm not sure. What I am pretty sure about is that none of those age verifying services are rolled out to protect children. Hence the question: then what for? And the only logical answer to this question is that one: to harvest data.
In general, I would expect an identity verification firm that I'm hiring to secure and then physically delete any sensitive records my customers are uploading, unless I explicitly opt-in otherwise. My guess is in this case that Discord is attempting to train its own models for first-pass verification, so this is a training corpus; there's no evidence that Persona's doing anything with Palantir, other than proximity of funding.
The broader issue here is that SV VC is starting to feel mildly radioactive when it comes to public opinion; Persona's previous lead fund (up through its Series B) was Index, run by the more conventionally-liberal Neil Rimer, and no one worried about that. The entanglement of Silicon Valley's oligarch class in very extreme politics* at a time of very fraught national political upheaval is making VC money politically-exposed money; if you take FF or Sequioa cash, how certain are you that they won't just get involved in your business, but push you to take specific political or social positions that serve their non-fiscal interests? How certain are your customers that that isn't happening to you?
For decades, SV venture capital has been tech money, and generally smart tech money (I don't like Thiel, but the man is absolutely the smartest of the PayPal Mafia set, and his success bears that out). Now, for various reasons (the end of ZIRP, the failure of major tech bets since 2016 or so to pay off, COVID overvaluations), VCs have moved into rent-seeking, particularly on government and military contracts. It's no longer tech money, it's political money, and, compared to traditional prime vendors, it's not clear that it's smart political money. After all, when the political winds turn, possibly as soon as this November, is it a smart strategy to have worked aggressively and incessantly to alienate the party coming into power? For a lot of startups with regulatory, legal, or political exposure risk, getting entangled with that might be more trouble than it's worth.
* There is no other term that suits the mix of open white supremacy and anti-democratic policies -- repealing the 19th Amendement, for example! -- that we see emerging from the PayPal Mafia.
> I would expect an identity verification firm that I'm hiring to secure and then physically delete
I would expect exactly the opposite. See, KYC stuff is something that no one wants, everyone hates and something that everybody is forced into from both sides: users and companies. KYC service is a product being created in pure hatred.
There are no penalties for leaking users' data. Bad PR? Oh please, it won't hurt a company which is already universally hated.
At the same time proper storage security costs money and time and creates friction.
Thus there are NO incentives to securely keep user data while there IS an incentive to care as less as possible.
I believe the argument will be that the rent seeking will be used to position themselves such that it doesn't matter who is in power, the government will listen to them not the other way around. Admittedly, the fact is, the Epstein Files existed across multiple political parties' justice departments and none of those folks have been investigated or prosecuted...
That's a model that works with SpaceX, which holds a unique grip on American orbital launch capability and capacity; less so for Anduril, which has been rather unsuccessful so far in its big-ticket drone-warfare efforts but has, to its credit, diversified key defense manufacturing areas by jumping into, e.g., SRMs; and possibly not at all for Palantir, which doesn't do anything a copy of Neo4J doesn't. And there's a real question regarding their ability to continue, post-DJT, holding security clearances given their personal lives and behaviors, their contacts with foreign officials, and whether they had derogatory information on other clearance holders that they did not bring forward.
I mean it probably is willing to do unsavory things and that’s the problem. Startups often are pressured by investors to do things to get continued funding in the next round. You’re already taking so much risk, you wouldn’t risk more by being on the bad side of a VC. You have to cooperate with their other portfolio companies - basically all VCs expect this. So yes, merely having Peter Thiel around is a problem.
Remember, customers of Discord are facing a huge risk - that their identity could lead to the being detained or deported. Even if the chance is small they can’t take that risk. This Persona company is unfortunately not going to be acceptable to a rational user because of their affiliation.
And he was in the Epstein files, allegedly meeting with Russian officials repeatedly at Epstein’s place. One of which is a handler for assets of their intelligence service.
funny how the FAQ disclaimer about Persona already vanished from the site. not a great look when your transparency lasts shorter than the data retention.
> I know children aren't responsible for the sins of their parents, but it doesn't seem wholly irrelevant here that Palantir's UK division is headed by Oswald Mosley's grandson.
Let's pretend that age verification is a valid need -- is there a way using cryptographic approaches to viably allow an end user to prove that they meet the criteria without sharing other data that they don't want third parties to have access to?
In my opinion that is just mathematical obfuscation. They will not be able to resist the urge to have a random looking token that through some obscure process can be mapped back to a person. If not at first, it will appear in some update after people stop talking about it. Discord knows what people are talking about.
Yes, and it is very easy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051 "Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token" And to save a debate, you can swap the phrase "liquor store" for "store" aka supermarket/grocery store.
I honestly am glad that all of this is happening, because any time a conservative in the future starts complaining about government overreach, the only response to them should be is that "well, this is what you like".
You’re not wrong. But in America there is only one party that is thoroughly owned by Russia and that’s the party in charge of the executive branch right now.
Owned by Russia? How'd you reach that conclusion? Just take a look at the sanctions imposed on them and the US support for Ukraine in the war.
Also: it seems you've fallen into the "Russia is our enemy" propaganda trap.
>Discord have belatedly confirmed that they're working with Persona, an identity detection firm backed by a fund directed by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, as part of Discord's new global age verification system rollout.
>As PCGamer note, Persona's lead investors during two recent rounds of venture capital funding were Founders Fund, who valued them at $1.5 billion in 2021. The Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel in 2020.
>Palantir have, among other things, worked extensively with the USA's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE, [...]
The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to Palantir or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Thiel, but is there any evidence for this? For instance, is Thiel known for meddling in the affairs of the companies his fund invests in, or pushing them together for collabs like what Musk does (eg. with x/x.ai/spacex)?
I think it's prudent to assume that these companies are selling your information to anyone with two nickels to rub together, regardless of which tech celebrities they are linked to.
This. The data collection is the product, that’s why it’s free.
It doesn't matter if he's known to meddle in the affairs of the companies in which he owns equity stakes. Owning the stake means he could meddle.
Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. Try it:
"The article tries to imply that Persona might be sending your ID scans to [one of Satan's companies] or doing other unsavory things with it, because it's linked to Satan"
So for anyone who cares about PR at all, the immediate instinct upon discovering you might be linked them is to reverse course and apologize profusely to your users.
> Peter Thiel's personal brand and Palantir are so toxic and creepy in the eyes of most of the public that you can basically just substitute 'Satan' in any statement involving them, and that's how it looks to regular people. [...]
Which is very funny and ironic given Thiel's weird ass personal beliefs.
The irony is not lost on me. Thiel's political activism on the side of people who will immediately give him the Alan Turing treatment the first chance they get is a howler for the ages.
Money buys influence.
Do we need evidence beyond it being linked to Thiel? Being linked to one of the most evil people in America seems like more than enough to me.
He is also linked to ycombinator which owns hacker news. If we are that reductionist, would you say that hacker news sends data to Palantir.
Well, the privacy darling Flock was from the YC 2017 summer batch, so I think it's already known what VCs think about ethics if it can make good money.
Hint, it's optional.
(And while I'm not saying for eg PG is personally an anti privacy guy, it's impossible not to hold YC leadership accountable for aiding these cos, or at least looking away.)
Why would you think it doesn't?
Probably does
One big difference is that Discord literally told people they were going to be using their data for a Theil backed experiment. That's a lot different than the possibility that a company might send your data.
That being said, no, it wouldn't particularly surprise me if Y Combinator sends data to Palantir.
> is there any evidence for this
I'm not sure. What I am pretty sure about is that none of those age verifying services are rolled out to protect children. Hence the question: then what for? And the only logical answer to this question is that one: to harvest data.
In general, I would expect an identity verification firm that I'm hiring to secure and then physically delete any sensitive records my customers are uploading, unless I explicitly opt-in otherwise. My guess is in this case that Discord is attempting to train its own models for first-pass verification, so this is a training corpus; there's no evidence that Persona's doing anything with Palantir, other than proximity of funding.
The broader issue here is that SV VC is starting to feel mildly radioactive when it comes to public opinion; Persona's previous lead fund (up through its Series B) was Index, run by the more conventionally-liberal Neil Rimer, and no one worried about that. The entanglement of Silicon Valley's oligarch class in very extreme politics* at a time of very fraught national political upheaval is making VC money politically-exposed money; if you take FF or Sequioa cash, how certain are you that they won't just get involved in your business, but push you to take specific political or social positions that serve their non-fiscal interests? How certain are your customers that that isn't happening to you?
For decades, SV venture capital has been tech money, and generally smart tech money (I don't like Thiel, but the man is absolutely the smartest of the PayPal Mafia set, and his success bears that out). Now, for various reasons (the end of ZIRP, the failure of major tech bets since 2016 or so to pay off, COVID overvaluations), VCs have moved into rent-seeking, particularly on government and military contracts. It's no longer tech money, it's political money, and, compared to traditional prime vendors, it's not clear that it's smart political money. After all, when the political winds turn, possibly as soon as this November, is it a smart strategy to have worked aggressively and incessantly to alienate the party coming into power? For a lot of startups with regulatory, legal, or political exposure risk, getting entangled with that might be more trouble than it's worth.
* There is no other term that suits the mix of open white supremacy and anti-democratic policies -- repealing the 19th Amendement, for example! -- that we see emerging from the PayPal Mafia.
> I would expect an identity verification firm that I'm hiring to secure and then physically delete
I would expect exactly the opposite. See, KYC stuff is something that no one wants, everyone hates and something that everybody is forced into from both sides: users and companies. KYC service is a product being created in pure hatred.
There are no penalties for leaking users' data. Bad PR? Oh please, it won't hurt a company which is already universally hated.
At the same time proper storage security costs money and time and creates friction.
Thus there are NO incentives to securely keep user data while there IS an incentive to care as less as possible.
I believe the argument will be that the rent seeking will be used to position themselves such that it doesn't matter who is in power, the government will listen to them not the other way around. Admittedly, the fact is, the Epstein Files existed across multiple political parties' justice departments and none of those folks have been investigated or prosecuted...
That's a model that works with SpaceX, which holds a unique grip on American orbital launch capability and capacity; less so for Anduril, which has been rather unsuccessful so far in its big-ticket drone-warfare efforts but has, to its credit, diversified key defense manufacturing areas by jumping into, e.g., SRMs; and possibly not at all for Palantir, which doesn't do anything a copy of Neo4J doesn't. And there's a real question regarding their ability to continue, post-DJT, holding security clearances given their personal lives and behaviors, their contacts with foreign officials, and whether they had derogatory information on other clearance holders that they did not bring forward.
I mean it probably is willing to do unsavory things and that’s the problem. Startups often are pressured by investors to do things to get continued funding in the next round. You’re already taking so much risk, you wouldn’t risk more by being on the bad side of a VC. You have to cooperate with their other portfolio companies - basically all VCs expect this. So yes, merely having Peter Thiel around is a problem.
Remember, customers of Discord are facing a huge risk - that their identity could lead to the being detained or deported. Even if the chance is small they can’t take that risk. This Persona company is unfortunately not going to be acceptable to a rational user because of their affiliation.
Let's be fair: almost everything is linked to Peter Thiel's dark magic company these days.
The UK's NHS is already quite close with Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/uk/
And he was in the Epstein files, allegedly meeting with Russian officials repeatedly at Epstein’s place. One of which is a handler for assets of their intelligence service.
funny how the FAQ disclaimer about Persona already vanished from the site. not a great look when your transparency lasts shorter than the data retention.
and every post about it being quickly deleted. It's afraid.
Remember when I said fuck discord and people came to defend them and say “but surely they aren’t keeping the data”…
They are not friendly.
The title should include Palantir too
> I know children aren't responsible for the sins of their parents, but it doesn't seem wholly irrelevant here that Palantir's UK division is headed by Oswald Mosley's grandson.
"ad-hominem is ugly and wrong, like you"
Never attribute to ad-hominem what is adequately explained by nepotism.
Let's pretend that age verification is a valid need -- is there a way using cryptographic approaches to viably allow an end user to prove that they meet the criteria without sharing other data that they don't want third parties to have access to?
In my opinion that is just mathematical obfuscation. They will not be able to resist the urge to have a random looking token that through some obscure process can be mapped back to a person. If not at first, it will appear in some update after people stop talking about it. Discord knows what people are talking about.
Yes, and it is very easy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051 "Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token" And to save a debate, you can swap the phrase "liquor store" for "store" aka supermarket/grocery store.
If that was a valid need, it would be solved entirely differently. ZK algorithms are a complete and privacy-preserving solution to that problem.
I find it impossible to believe that age verification services are rolled out for what they say they are.
I honestly am glad that all of this is happening, because any time a conservative in the future starts complaining about government overreach, the only response to them should be is that "well, this is what you like".
As if this had anything to do with right and left or conservative and liberal. How are there still people who see the world like that in 2026?
How do you see the world?
You’re not wrong. But in America there is only one party that is thoroughly owned by Russia and that’s the party in charge of the executive branch right now.
Owned by Russia? How'd you reach that conclusion? Just take a look at the sanctions imposed on them and the US support for Ukraine in the war. Also: it seems you've fallen into the "Russia is our enemy" propaganda trap.