Danny Crighton has a CS degree from Stanford. I'm not entirely convinced by the article either, but your criticism would be a bit more credible if you managed to avoid being factually wrong.
And there's nothing factually wrong about RSS providing weaker data to ad-tech survellance. The only reason it's being pushed back onto the front burner, is because the Facebook election botch has got everyone spooked about analytics trackers, and lots of richer sources are going dark, putting RSS back on an even footing with the usual web tracker data sources, because everyone is blocking thirdparty scripts and resources.
Meanwhile, pretty sure the guy is operating as a tool for a paycheck sourced from the industry the article serves, and having qualifications only helps to support such theories, since credibility makes the opinion of a stooge all the more valuable. Maybe I should lump you in with him.