Comment by lolinder

Rather odd policy choices is an understatement.

The context to keep in mind here is that Mozilla purchased an ad company back in June. They spent money on it, and they will move to earn a return on investment.

Absent that context this could just be another tone deaf policy choice that gets rolled back when there's enough heat, but with that context in mind it's far more likely to be them laying the legal foundation to incorporate Anonym's targeted advertising into Firefox.

From the Register article about the acquisition:

> Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence for ad watchdog Check My Ads, told The Register in an email that she's generally skeptical of claims about privacy-preserving ad technology.

> "For example, how do Anonym’s audience capabilities, like their lookalike modeling, jibe with what Mozilla considers to be 'exploitative models of data extraction?' The data that is 'securely shared' by platforms and advertisers to enable ad targeting and measurement have to come from somewhere – and there’s more to privacy than not leaking user IDs."

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_b...