> It’s in popular culture and HN comments most often as spyware and mass surveillance of people, and that’s a bit of a shame.

I don't know whether you mean it's a shame that people consider it spyware, or if you meant that it's a shame that it manifests as spyware typically. I agree with the latter, not the former. It usually is spyware. If companies went for simple opt-in popups with a brief description of the reasoning, I'd be all for that. I sometimes opt-in to these requests myself, despite being a fairly privacy-conscious person, because I understand the benefit they have to the people collecting the data for good purposes. But when surveillance is opt-out (or no choice given), it's just spyware.