The "they" here can't really coerce the dev team unless the dev team is willing to comply. Refusing to implement an unethical feature is always an option, and given that we're often considered engineers it is well within our right to deem something unsafe or against best practices.

I hate all that tracking and marketing bs as much as the next guy but if the marketing team is the main stakeholder and is responsible for the budget that won't work. I also might be a bit biased as a freelancer but every team I worked in so far had other freelancers on it and if we strongly recommend aginst a practice but the client insisted then we basically had the choice to either abandon the project (and therefore our current source of income) or simply do what they say. I would love to be on a position where refusing is an option that would not cost me my gig.

This thread really has no purpose if we don't see it as enough of a problem to stand against. I really don't mean that to sound like I'm on a high horse (I'm sure it still sounds that way). There's nothing wrong with being okay with the trade offs, but we don't get to implement these features and complain about how bad they are.