Activist group GetUp’s campaign against supermarket giant Coles over its partnership with US software firm Palantir has entered a bitter new stage, with the group claiming that it is now being threatened with legal action.
“In the space of just a few weeks, Coles has bullied ad companies into pulling almost 700 GetUp billboards from outside its own stores. It’s ordered staff to tear GetUp member stickers off its shelves,” GetUp said in an update to its members.
“And after refusing for months to engage with our campaign, Coles has just threatened GetUp with aggressive legal action if we don’t pull our campaign and publicly apologise.”
GetUp began its campaign in March 2026, calling on Coles to cut ties with the US company over concerns that its technologies were being used to monitor customers.
“Coles says Palantir is being used for internal planning purposes – but also that their tools have access to ‘10 billion rows of data’ across more than 840 supermarkets. That’s all we’ve been told,” GetUp said in a petition shared at the time.
For its part, a Coles spokesperson told Cyber Daily that Palantir’s software was only being used as “a data integration and analytics platform, which helps our team members make practical, informed decisions across our business”.
“The software is used for bakery production planning, evaluating promotions, rostering and providing insights for retail media performance reporting. It’s an operational platform focused on helping stores run more effectively,” the spokesperson said.
Palantir, according to Coles, cannot repurpose any of the data Coles collects, and its software is entirely under the sole control of the supermarket chain.
Now, months later, it appears GetUp’s campaign is intensifying.
“So here’s the plan. We’re not backing down – we’re going bigger. More ads, in front of more Coles customers,” GetUp said.
“A legal fund ready for GetUp to fight back. And an ambitious attempt to force a shareholder vote on this at Coles’ upcoming AGM. Because we can’t let Coles bully us into silence.”
At issue is the filming of a Coles employee, whose footage was later used in GetUp’s marketing material.
“Coles’ lawyers want us to pull the campaign and post a public apology to all of our social media accounts and website,” GetUp said.
“The stated grounds? A stock video we used in the billboard ads happened to show a worker – and Coles says using it breached that worker’s privacy and consent.”
Cyber Daily understands that Coles has not commenced any legal action, and that the confidential letter was purely related to Coles’ employee and their distress over being filmed without their permission, and then used in GetUp’s campaign without their consent.
For its part, GetUp said it acted quickly to blur the employee’s face, but would not be removing the campaign material, nor slowing down its activity.
“Corporations this size have lawyers, ad budgets and comms teams whose entire job is making inconvenient questions go away,” GetUp said.
“What they don’t have is tens of thousands of people who’ve decided that a fairer Australia means corporations that answer to us – and who fund the campaign that makes sure they have to.”
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