US's largest newspaper chain partners with Palantir to analyze audience data

USA Today’s parent company just told investors it’s teaming up with Palantir to squeeze more money out of reader behavior — and the internet’s reaction was basically: absolutely not, what could possibly go wrong? The company says this is about understanding what people read, showing better recommendations, and turning anonymous visitors into known customers as search traffic drops. In plain English: fewer people are arriving from Google, so the newspaper chain wants to get much better at tracking what readers do and selling ads or subscriptions around it.

But the comments? Pure alarm bells with a side of dark comedy. One user summed up the vibe with the beautifully cursed line, “That’s like eating dinner with a chainsaw.” Another warned that if data sits on U.S. servers, privacy promises can become little more than comforting wallpaper, arguing that governments can still demand access. Others zoomed out and noted how weird this all is historically: newspapers once had to guess what readers liked from sales and letters; now every click is treated like a gold nugget of personal behavior.

And then there’s the Palantir baggage. Commenters brought up the company’s work with immigration enforcement, the military, and the broader Peter Thiel universe, with one pointing to a related TechCrunch report as proof that the whole thing feels bigger — and darker — than just ad targeting. The result: a story that might be about newspaper revenue on paper, but online it turned into a full-blown “are we monetizing readers or profiling them?” fight.