It's clear to me that that article is providing a cleverly-rewritten version of reality, that requires some translation to understand what exactly it means.
From that article:
Building better technology for the industry
In parallel to our existing consumer products, we have the opportunity to build a better infrastructure for the online advertising industry as a whole. Advertising at large cannot be improved unless the tech it’s built upon prioritizes securing user data. This is precisely why we acquired Anonym.
Anonym is building technology that can provide more privacy-preserving infrastructure for data sharing between advertisers and publishers, in a way that also supports a level playing field rather than consolidating data in a few large companies.
Advertising will not improve unless we address the underlying data sharing issues, and solve for the economic incentives that rely on that data. We want to reshape the industry so that aggregated population insights are the norm instead of platforms sharing individual user data with each other indiscriminately.
Anonym is building the technology needed to enable that, with privacy-preserving techniques such as differential privacy, which adds calibrated noise to data sets so that the individual user data is kept as private as possible, while still being useful in aggregate. Calculations on that data occur in secure and private environments. The system is designed such that humans don’t have access to individual data. The outputs are aggregated and anonymized, then Anonym destroys the individual data. This pragmatic solution inspires us to envision a world in which digital ads can be both effective and privacy-preserving. It’s not impossible.
Now, keep in mind that Mozilla, through its acquisition of Anonym, effectively should be read as equal to its acquired organisation. Effectively, by wanting to control the data streams, Mozilla becomes a stand-in for publishers. They will be the aggregators and manipulators of data, meaning they are effectively hijacking advertising at the client-side. For this to be viable and above all profitable for Mozilla, it means that end-users should not block advertising completely; if there is no delivered ad, then there won't be any data to manipulate or offer to advertisers by Mozilla through their infrastructure.
Mozilla effectively becomes a broker for aggregated user data. That is a very lucrative business.
Another major issue is that Mozilla, in its blog post, fully ignores the fact that advertising is perfectly possible without collecting data of any kind of the user viewing the advertising (as demonstrated by the GDPR enforcement, even though that's a whole different can of worms), so they don't
have to address the underlying data structures, and they don't
have to share this data with advertisers, in the first place -- "anonymized" or not. The issue is that not-sharing would make Mozilla uninteresting as a publishing partner for advertisers.
They also say they "want to re-shape the industry". At 5% marketshare, Mozilla simply isn't in a position to re-shape the industry and it's a lofty goal that won't be achieved, setting themselves up to fail once again by not reality-checking their intent before going full-steam ahead. The backlash they are getting will also further reduce their market share.
So... translated?
Building more profitable technology for us
In parallel to our existing consumer products, we have the opportunity to build a more profitable infrastructure for us. Advertising at large allegedly cannot be improved unless the tech it’s built upon prioritizes securing user data. This is precisely why we acquired Anonym.
Mozilla is integrating technology that can (theoretically) provide more privacy-preserving infrastructure for data sharing between advertisers and Mozilla, in a way that provides an income stream to Mozilla rather than sending user data directly to a few large companies.
**unrealistic goal paragraph removed**
Mozilla is integrating the technology needed to enable that, with minimally privacy-preserving techniques such as differential privacy, which adds calibrated[How?] noise to data sets so that the individual user data is only known to Mozilla, while still being useful in aggregate. Calculations on that data occur in Mozilla-operated servers. The system is designed such that humans don’t have access to individual data. The outputs are aggregated and anonymized, sent to advertisers, then Mozilla destroys the individual data (but not the profile-building aggregates). This pragmatic solution ensures we can tap into the advertising data stream for personalized advertising and data harvesting. It’s not impossible.
