Who is sociopathic enough to follow through on an idea like this?
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
On one hand, you are bound to find at least a few individuals that were born lacking the sufficient amount of human morality and/or empathy, among the 7 billion humans on this planet.
However, it's much easier to find examples if you look at organisms that by their very nature are incapable of relating to humans in that way. Such as cats or spiders or lizards. However they usually aren't in a position to follow through on the idea. But this lack of power also holds for most of the humans in the previous paragraph (even considering sociopaths are said to hold many positions of power).
So that basically leaves corporations as the answer to your question.
This is capitalism at its finest - putting people into positions where they’re unable to express their moral preferences. And you can’t change this as an individual or minority group, as everybody grows up in a system that heavily encourages (and in many cases forces) that people put themselves into that position - as a minority actor, you can’t prevent the system from working.
Nobody would build these systems for free.
It seems quite likely most of the developers at FB that work with these kind of features are in a position to leave. I mean, a face recognition expert at Facebook isn't really something that just falls out of your pocket.
They would however likely change to something similar though.
I would agree those in poverty are not in a position to leave their job (and even then, I'm willing to consider options). Devs in Silicon Valley do have a choice though. You are correct to identify capitalism as a fundamental problem, but you've conveniently minimized their privilege too far in this case. They don't get to say "capitalism made me do it." They really did and still do have an opportunity to be moral, costly as it may be to their standard of living. They are part of the problem because this just is their expression of their moral preferences.
They might not be able to prevent evil, but that doesn't mean they should actively participate in it. Just because you can't stop the Nazis doesn't give you license to be one.
I hold programmers responsible for what they program, especially anyone living above the poverty line. There is no justification for their behavior. It's plain evil.
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You're telling me someone who can get a job at Facebook is at risk of poverty and cannot find at least an employer who is marginally less creepy?