Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious, did anyone on your team raise any ethical concerns in regards to the potential privacy violation? If not, how was the topic handled by employees/management?
If we expect employees speaking up to fix this, we are going to live in constant disappointment. The pro-privacy people live in a very small, but loud, echo chamber. We need to be proactive with developing pro-privacy technologies if we expect something to be done about this. The majority of the population and the majority of developers seem to not care at all about intimately targeted ads.
It's not just apathy, it's also because there's often so much you can do without pissing off the management or generally looking like a "bad culture fit". And then they'll get someone else to do it anyway.
At my current job, I don't have any privacy-related issues, but I have to handle occasional clueless ideas from the customer. It usually goes like this:
They: We want to have this security-related change X.
Me: Uh ok... but are you sure it's a good idea? What's your threat model?
They: ???
Me: You see, this change will make it more difficult for user to do Y, with no real
benefit to security, because A, B and C.
They: Uh... yes, you're right; let's not do it then.
-.-