Ask HN: What's it like to develop surveillance tech?

I grew up watching the birth of the www (amazing) and have since watched large chunks of it turned over to tracking users ostensibly for marketing purposes (somewhat disheartening). I find it hard to maintain enthusiasm for emerging tech like ML, VR and wearables when I see how they will probably fit into the tracking/data-broking landscape. I'm not casting any judgments, but I imagine there are quite a few developers my age out there who remember the promise of the early days of the web but now work on the sort of tech that is starting to make the web feel a little creepy and hostile. I'm wondering how that feels - does it give you pause, or is it just the way things are inevitably going?