Sinister Technology Used Appropriately

Palantir is a sort-of evil data mining company co-founded by the sort-of evil billionaire Peter Thiel. It is being used by the value-neutral New York City Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement to locate “illegal hotels” being run by definitely evil* commercial hosts on Airbnb. Sort-of evil Peter Thiel is also in Airbnb. This may look like a venture capital ouroboros, but it is less one end of a snake preying on the other than time-honored synergy: One company cleans up the bad actors in the other company, making the first look attractive and the second at least palatable to government agencies. It’s so beautiful it looks like money.

* (Why are commercial Airbnb hosts definitely evil? Well, consider that the state attorney’s office found that six percent of hosts did thirty-six percent of private apartment bookings, for thirty-seven percent of the revenue, and that more than four-and-a-half thousand apartments listed on Airbnb were booked for short-term rentals for three months of the year or more — meaning somebody could and should have been living in those apartments. Instead, that somebody just outbid you on the perfect apartment you just had your eye on in Ridgewood.)

(via)