Tech's deepening split over ads and privacy

A new fight between Facebook and Apple over the mechanics of ad tech is surfacing an industry divide over user privacy and spotlighting longstanding dilemmas about the tracking and use of personal information online. Facebook warned advertisers jAug 27 that a coming change to Apple's iOS could devastate revenue for ads that sends users straight to the App Store to install an app — an approach that's used widely by developers including mobile game makers. Apple has pitched the change, aimed at giving users clearer choices over who is allowed to track them across different apps, as a bid to better protect iPhone users' privacy.

Meanwhile, Palantir CEO Alex Karp pilloried Big Tech in a letter to investors included in his company's filing to go public. Writing that Palantir shares "fewer and fewer of the technology sector's values and commitments," Karp suggested that collecting data to target advertising is morally and ethically inferior to Palantir’s use of data to support US military and government functions.

Silicon Valley's businesses are all so intertwined and interdependent that it's hard to know what's really at stake in this kind of conflict and how serious the parties are. Both these conflicts — Facebook vs. Apple and Palantir vs. the rest of the industry —point to the dilemma underlying Silicon Valley's free, ad-supported business model. While users and policymakers can make changes at the edges, it's not clear user actions or government remedies can fundamentally change the business model at the root of the problem.