The parent comment said “every single person in adtech is complicit”.
Most employees do not possess that level of agency about what happens to their work.
> As long as you have a database in the cloud with a non-trivial amount of user data, you don’t really have control over what becomes of it.
Who I work for and what I do is the agency. If I want to better influence what happens to my work, I can make sure my work doesn't have this abuse incentive.