Well, nothing here is surprising beyond maybe the scale of things (if a random pizza joint now uses facial recognition in ads, who else is using them?). But those things still need to be called out and opposed, because peer pressure is an important part of morality in society. People are social animals, and are less likely to do things that are disliked by their friends.
Looking at things from a little distance, the whole thing is abhorrent, and paints a really sad state of our society. I wrote this many times, and will keep writing it: if you did the same things personally to your friend that people in advertising industry do to everyone, you'd most likely get punched in the face. And yet somehow marketing became a respectable occupation.
There isn't really much consensus---even on HN---that passive demographic data collection is a bad thing alone. People claim it is, and I believe they feel it is---then they turn around and do things that compromise their stated beliefs because it's convenient.
I liken it to the gap between the rhetoric around open source and free software and the reality that Windows and Mac OS make up approximately 90% of OS marketshare. You can believe what you want to believe, but from a business standpoint you'd be putting yourself at a disadvantage if you structure your business requiring FOSS operating systems to climb to even 25% of marketshare; there's a similar situation, probably, for customer data tracking and advertising preference tracking.
Looking at things from a little distance, the whole thing is abhorrent, and paints a really sad state of our society. I wrote this many times, and will keep writing it: if you did the same things personally to your friend that people in advertising industry do to everyone, you'd most likely get punched in the face. And yet somehow marketing became a respectable occupation.