this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
102 points (92.5% liked)

Europe

11620 readers
548 users here now

News and information from Europe πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
  10. Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.

(This list may get expanded as necessary.)

Posts that link to the following sources will be removed

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com

(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)

Ban lengths, etc.

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 21 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old

And liberals wonder why their ideology is a slur.

[–] Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 15 hours ago

Schufa GmbH is already drooling

[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why? Palantir serves no useful role in society, and provides no positive value to humanity. Just get rid of it, and things will be better.

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

At the end of the day it's just data management and query software. It's used for a lot of evil but also has a lot of mundane uses.

I have a friend who works for a car manufacturer and they use Palantir software to track billions of car parts that end up in cars. Then when the cars have warranty claims or otherwise end up being serviced, the failures are recorded, and can be correlated.

There might be "random" failures all over the world and the software let's them trace it all back to a particular machine in a particular factory producing parts that end up failing more often later on and improve or replace the machine.

So a non-evil Palantir replacement could definitely be useful for society.

[–] JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We do not want an european Palantir alternative to spy on us. We do not want to be spyed upon at all

[–] 0x0@infosec.pub 4 points 1 day ago

But if they do, they should also spy on Zensursula and her corporate friends

The eu is a god damn clown show

[–] Bababasti@feddit.org 76 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

NB: Politico is part of the right-wing agenda Axel Springer group.

Not sure why they picked out Palantir, but the "vow" (i.e. agreement) is about much more than Palantir, in fact, the company is mentioned nowhere in it.

β€œTo foster data sovereignty, France and Germany will examine the development of a European sovereign digital backbone, taking into consideration data-centric security, artificial intelligence and cloud solutions from both countries,” the two countries said in a joint declaration Friday after talks between Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron.

I'm still not a friend of European mass surveillance or even AI in general, but the above sounds mostly good and necessary.

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Upon acquisition of Insider in 2015, and again in 2021 with Politico, Mathias DΓΆpfner allegedly stated that staff would need to adhere to Axel Springer's principles, including support for a united Europe, "reconciliation between Germans and Jews", Israel's right to exist, and a free-market economy, and that staff who disagree with the principles "should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly".

Not all of that is far-right imho, but demanding such a pledge - instead of objectivity - from any journalist is bad, very bad.

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A free market economy is vague as well, because I certainly wouldn't label an Anglo-Saxon model as free for the labourer. The labourer is freest in a market socialist or council communist model.

The remark on Israel is also promoting apartheid, as Israel inherently is a racist and antisemitist project. So I def would view it as promoting a far-right government. When critics are silenced, democracy dies.

There is no "Jewish and democratic" state; there is no "Christian and democratic" state; only through secularism or laΓ―citΓ© is democracy truly attainable.

[–] FerretyFever0@fedia.io 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yay, European mass surveillance!!!!!

[–] oneser@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

Champions League theme song plays in background

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 41 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I've decided to take on Saruman with an even bigger orc army. Also, my big eyeball has a corrective lens.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago

Only that the EU has to buy the corrective lens, aka AI technology, from the US. Collecting the data is the easy part, processing is the difficult part.

Besides, are the US going to share all data? Without their own Whatsapp and Facebook, and mobile operating systems, the EU doesn't have the same user tracking data.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago
[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 6 points 2 days ago

Is that a threat?

[–] x1gma@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

So, they want to develop a rival, huh?

  • no actual sources for data, compared with american companies like Google, Meta, etc.
  • lack of experts without ethics, who have the skillset required and have no ethical objections building this
  • no infrastructure of this size
  • no european frontier models

Or, in less technical, no data to process, no developers to build it, nowhere to run this on, and no technical means to analyze that data.

I can't see how this is not gonna be a gigantic waste of money, that could've been spent on literally anything else that would work better and that Europe would actually benefit from.

[–] kugel7c@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Idk the BND and its French equivalent can largely buy up the exact same data sources the Americans are buying as well.

I agree that it's kind of a waste in terms of why would we want mass surveillance at home. But believing the EU can't do this from a tech /resource perspective is rather shortsighted. Now a German French co-production running super smoothly especially at the start is also unlikely but they probably will get there at some point.

[–] x1gma@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

The Americans are not buying the data sources, they have the data sources. Whatever else they are buying is just an addition to what they have. For surveillance purposes location data alone from Google/Apple and/or Meta, Snap, whatever is pure gold, and I'm pretty sure that's not sold.

Even when buying it - it's literally digital gold, and probably just as expensive and you would buy american. So you're spending a metric fuckton of money to buy the dataset and do the same, but worse analysis.

I don't know how it's going in France, but Germany hasn't managed to digitalize anything properly, and even the "flagship" projects are a fucking mess. Even though some of them work (by now), they don't hold up to any serious quality, proven several times by the CCC for example. Germany would be literally the last I'd trust to build a system like this, unfortunately.

And that's not starting about the bureaucracy, potential laws that this would breach, and the backlash for ethical reasons.