Silicon Valley Craziness, May Day 2026 Update
May 4, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
It is May 1, 2026, May Day. If I recall what I learned in the seventh grade is represents hope and vitality. I wonder what my grade school teacher would have said if I told her that Meta fired “Over 1,100 Kenyan workers lost their jobs after blowing the whistle on Meta’s smart glasses content.” Yep, adult content. Now that’s hope and vitality.
Thanks, Venice.ai. This is a convincing Silicon Valley bro who wants his special brand of horticulture to invade everything.
But on May Day 2026 I read an equally interesting write up published on April 26, 2026. I missed this because I was involved in a conference in suburban Boston. “Palantir Employees Are Talking about Company’s Descent into Fascism” nestles next to the Alex Karp’s book publicity campaign. (For an example of how to market a book see “Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s 22-Point Manifesto Declares War on Inclusivity and Hollow Pluralism.”)
Yep, Silicon Valley. Frisky content on smart glasses and pretty sporty content in a tasty manifesto package.
Let’s look at the “Descent into Fascism” write up because it is a bright sunny day in rural Kentucky. There is nothing like a brush with allegations of fascism to bring that metaphor of hope and vitality to life.
Let’s do the descent thing!
The first thing I noticed is that Ars Technica is recycling a story from Wired Magazine.
The next point that caught my attention was this sequence in the Ars Wired write up:
“Our involvement with ice has been internally swept under the rug under Trump2 too much,” one person wrote in a Slack message WIRED reported at the time. “We need an understanding of our involvement here.” Around this time, Palantir started wiping Slack conversations after seven days in at least one channel where most of the internal debate takes place, #palantir-in-the-news. Because the decision wasn’t formally announced before the policy rolled out, one worker who noticed the deletions asked in the channel why the company was removing “relevant internal discourse on current events.” A member of Palantir’s cybersecurity team responded, writing that the decision was made in response to leaks.
I quite like the idea of hiding information. I am not sure about employee understanding of the motives and methods of Silicon Valley founder philosophers. Deleting content is nothing new. Those broken stone tablets in Egypt provide a hint that destroying content has been a characteristic of humans for a while.
The third item that caught my attention was:
In March, Karp gave an interview to CNBC claiming that AI could undermine the power of “humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters” and increase the power of working-class male voters. While critics reacted to the piece, calling the statements concerning, so did employees internally: “Is it true that AI disruption is going to disproportionately negatively affect women and people who vote Democrat? and if it is, why are we cool with that?” one worker asked on Slack in a channel dedicated to news about Palantir.
This comment echoed some of the marketing hoo-hah about Cambridge Analytica. For those who work in online information, the shaping or weaponizing is part of the game. Call filtering “selective dissemination of information” or SDI and the method is a benefit to a researcher who wants to review on point content efficiently. Just do this weaponization or shaping without telling anyone is a quite powerful method for controlling what people think. Information has motive force, and it can move people to action: A new idea or a riot cleverly renamed “flash mob” several years ago.
The Ars Wired story loops back to reference the Karp-ifesto, and I urge you to read that if you have time.
Several observations:
- The Palantir “story,” its landing of significant government contracts, and the Karp book are a bit like a flower blooming on May 1, 2026. More to come.
- The push to convert the US to the Silicon Valley way is now underway. Time may be running out, and the tech bros may not get another, easier chance to flip American back to the Great Chain of Being approach popular in the Dark Ages
- Acceleration does not just apply to smart software. Going fast destabilizes going slow humans and institutions that exist to provide social stability. The speed is needed to create the greenhouse in which these May Day flowers can flourish.
I don’t want to be so obscure and indirect. But I am a dinobaby. Enjoy the new month. I know I will.
Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2025
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