The Palantir Files: public interest archives for platform accountability

Platforms designed for data integration and analysis introduce unique challenges for understanding the social implications of data management in public services. Researchers who study such platforms in the public interest must negotiate limited access to proprietary systems and the firms that make them but can create accountability through openly available data. This paper introduces an approach to researching a data integration and analysis firm, Palantir Technologies, through what we call 'public interest archives for platform accountability.' The paper begins by introducing data integration and analysis platforms as an emerging sector of the platform economy, followed by a summary of academic researchers' challenges. We then provide a literature review of Palantir research, public interest archives, and contemporary archival projects for platform accountability. Then, we present our Palantir case study and describe our methods for document tracking to build a corpus (n = 2807), including court documents, privacy impact assessments, press releases, contracts, Freedom of Information Act requests, non-governmental organization reports, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, and patents. We end with several vignettes that help researchers understand this material's significance to platform accountability.