Then I realize it's even better than before because it demonstrates for a potential employer that you'll push whatever buttons you're asked to in exchange for money, regardless of whether it's good for the user, the internet, or society as a whole.
I wouldn't. Over the decades I've seen many people hire, and later regret hiring, people who demonstrated poor character.
In a more public sense, remember the Bush-Clinton election where the full version of the fabled "It's the economy, stupid" slogan was "Character doesn't matter; it's the economy, stupid." And we see what happened when someone of poor character got power and an intern.
Or you could choose to not lie to yourself about said humans as money machines ideals with classic tropes like “there’s a lot of different teams” or “I haven’t seen that kind of thing at my local office”?
Throwing out a couple options here that don’t require intense mental gymnastics
Facebook provides value for billions of people as evidenced by their usage. They don't pay so ads are a trade-off. There's nothing inherently wrong with that unless you have a problem with how business works. And yes, a company that is one of the 10 most valuable in the world has a wide range of roles and there are infinite reasons why someone would work for them.
The list of possible extenuating circumstances extends to infinity when you think about it more deliberately. If you don’t, you’ve successfully bucketed someone based on quick, irrational judgment. That is poor behavior.
Perhaps you should have chosen not to work in finance then? Doesn't that industry quite literally "treat human beings like money machines"? Does this judgement not apply to you too?
That being said, it should be obvious even to you that the place where one invests one third of their day for years on end defines a large part of who that person is and how they behave during the other 2/3rds of the day.
I remember reading an article a few years ago where several senior ex-Facebook employees were horrified at what they did and were trying to protect their kids from the monster of online advertising. Funny how that becomes clearer once one's income doesn't depend on advertising any more.
As far as "cheerleading for the ad industry", I also built an adblocker, spent 6 figures to test alternative payments, am part of every initiative to make ads better, and have spoken with senators to push for regulation. But you wouldn't know that with the quick character judgement that you seemed to make, which is ironically the actual subject of this thread.
Good for you for changing careers but that doesn't make you better than anyone else nor is it applicable to any other person's life. Anyway, I'm not sure what ego has to do with anything but I'll take that as a sign that there are no better arguments forthcoming.
However that comment wasn't an "ad hominem attack", but I suspect we disagree on the definition of that as well.
It's a surprise to read that you want to regulate advertising, given your continous criticism of the GDPR and support of data collection in several comments.
What exactly do you understand by better ads and what kind of regulation do you support? Are we talking about yet another one of those "industry successfully regulates itself" stories?