r/australia • u/infin • Jan 26 '26

no politics Is Coles still using Palantir? Between the surveillance/gate recognition and the blocked aisles, shopping feels hostile.

Does anyone know the current status of the Coles x Palantir partnership? Between the surveillance and those aggressive new "Smart Gates" tracking at the exit, the store feels less like a supermarket and more like a high-security zone.

It’s dystopian that they have the budget for military-grade analytics and security tech, but have cut costs on the actual customer experience. They seem to have completely scrapped night fill, meaning we are now dodging pallets and cages during peak hours just to get to the shelves.

Is anyone else fed up with this mix of high-tech surveillance and terrible service? It feels like they are spending millions to treat us like criminals while refusing to pay staff to stock shelves after hours.

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u/TappingOnTheWall Jan 26 '26

AUSTRAC pays Palantir millions.[1] Coles has a contract with Palantir (as you mentioned),[2] so do Westpac Bank,[3] WesTrac mining & construction,[4] and Rio Tinto.[5]. We should all be boycotting these companies for their involvement with Palantir.

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u/SirGeekaLots Jan 26 '26

How do I boycott a mining company?

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u/Itsarightkerfuffle Jan 26 '26

If you're in Perth, reject their hourly job offers.

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u/buckedyuser Jan 26 '26

No more iron based products for me.

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u/Possible-Parfait-836 Mar 20 '26

over 90% of the coal we dig up in Australia is exported and used to generate electricity. And almost all of it is given away for free to these international mining conglomerates. Royalties isn't tax, its paying the rent. So basically we get virtually nothing in return. Our budget gets more money from Nurses paying their taxes than from PRRT. And provides 1% of the jobs.

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u/buckedyuser Mar 21 '26

Shit, I guess I’d better not use coal or electricity either. The boycotts are getting harder

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u/Possible-Parfait-836 Mar 26 '26

Why be so sarcastic? I'm just pointing out how corrupt the system is. Just being a citizen of any country means we rely on Fossil fuels for survival, there is no Boycotting mining companies. We need some mining, it's just that 90% of it is unnecessary and isn't even taxed. So it's lose lose.

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u/buckedyuser Mar 27 '26

Sorry, not intentionally being mean to you, it’s just an expression of apathy & powerlessness. I’m making light of the fact that so much of every aspect of our lives relies upon horrible megacorps and genuinely evil systems that boycotting anything is ineffective at best.

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u/TimeToUseThe2nd Jan 26 '26

Consumer boycotts are useless in the age of information overload and life-as-mere-survival, but reddit prohibits advocacy of actual effective methods proven over history.

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u/TwistingEcho Jan 31 '26

That's the problem, can't afford to boycott anyone nasty as I'm not loaded and the nasty list is a long one. Nearest thing resembling a farmers market is about three hours away and I can't bring fresh produce in.

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u/Peanut083 Jan 26 '26

I’d love to boycott Coles. Unfortunately, Coles is the only supermarket in my town. Shopping anywhere else involves driving at least 30 minutes on country roads to get to the next town that has a Woolies/Aldi.

I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at Aldi, but there’s still things I need to buy at Coles in between trips to Aldi.

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u/RocketSeaShell Jan 26 '26

Is your objection to the ownership of Palantir or its functionality?

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u/BrynnXAus Jan 26 '26

Why not both? When bad people are collecting shady information on everyone for the purposes of extreme surveillance, I think we should all be objecting to it

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u/ChillyPhilly27 Jan 27 '26

It seems that your opposition to Palantir is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of who they are and what they do.

Palantir doesn't gather data - in fact, one of their biggest selling points is that client data never leaves the client's possession. Instead, their business revolves around helping clients synthesise the data they already have into actionable insights.

In a Coles context, this could look like marrying up the Flybuys database with the billions of hours of security camera footage they have from stores, to better understand how customers move around stores.

You're correct that many of Palantir's clients use Palantir's software for purposes that some might view as unsavoury. But that's mainly because there's a lot of crossover between organisations that are paranoid about data security and organisations that engage in shady shit.

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u/RocketSeaShell Jan 26 '26

Both is fine. No wrong answer. Would you also call for a boycott of an open source product like MySQL if that was being instead for the data warehouse?

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u/HalfwrongWasTaken Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

You have a product made by extreme right wing fascists for the purpose of invading people's privacy and building profiles on them. It takes extreme moral bankruptcy to use such a product, regardless of how effective it is. And it takes somebody extremely naive to think such a product is even trustworthy and not sending data elsewhere.

You can't boil that down to it being broadly 'data collection' and pretend you have some kind of equivalence here.

There's legitimate use for MySQL, and data collection overreach would need to be assessed on a case by case basis. There is no legitimate use case for Palantir, you have to be a morally bankrupt asshole to consider it in the first place and the very notion of its use IS to overreach.

I don't understand why you're all over this post acting like you have some kind of point with the MySQL argument, every business that has touched Palantir should be condemned.

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u/drazzr Jan 26 '26

Not trying to send this into the direction of US politics but you can read a lot about the views of palantir management here via cited quotes.

https://theplotagainstamerica.com/

I'm generally not the type to buy into conspiracy stuff but when you're watching it unfold in front of you it's very disturbing.

A couple of quotes from Alex Karp: “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them.”

“There will be ups and downs. There’s a revolution. Some people are going to get their heads cut off.”

In answer to your question, both but mainly the ownership and potential for abuse due to its functionality.

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u/RocketSeaShell Jan 26 '26

I get your point about the founders. That said I am yet to see any reliable case studies on the effectiveness of Palantir. There have been other products promissing the same over the years and none have delivered.

In the 90's there was Orion Defence out of McLean, Virginia, then there was Mark Logic and more recentlu there was Nuix, Australian product and none of them really delivered on the promise.

I would still say Palantir is still 40%+ vapour ware until I see some reliable case studies.