The author lacks imagination or is not arguing entirely in good faith:

> I realised that knowing about my website visitors had zero effect on anything in the real world.

Perhaps that's true for them? But you don't have to try too hard to think of legitimate reasons why basic analytics are useful to any blog author who is trying to increase their reach, like knowing what topics are of most interest to their audience, when to post for bets result, comparing different styles of post etc.

They still have valid points against the intrusion of data gathering, but it's simply inaccurate to claim there's no benefit to the data.

Can we start distinguishing between basic stats and surveillance? It sounds like this author also disabled web server logs as any knowledge of traffic is deep surveillance. Is this really the way?

Maybe some people get motivated or improve content by knowing what gets actually clicked. There is a huge difference between reading web server logs and adding third party services to the websites that track everything.

> When I started this blog – 17 years ago! – I installed WordPress’s analytics plugin

I wrote that plugin and the backend service. That wasn’t my original idea. It started as something else: a plugin for adding your blog to a traffic ranking site called Blogs of the Day. It didn’t focus on analytics for bloggers, it published lists of blogs ranked by traffic. It was meant to help readers find interesting blogs. It was good until it got gamed by low-quality content with iframes and scripts. Automattic bought it and hired me and then I wrote the Stats plugin.

I agree with the author. But this is just an attitude about personal publishing, not a fact. It’s also fine to hold the opposite attitude and to seek validation through data, and even to adapt oneself accordingly.

There is a hierarchy of informative audience reactions to a blog. A page view is an extremely weak signal carrying very little information. Likes and other emoji reactions are slightly more informative. Comments are even more. If you aren’t getting comments and likes on your personal blog, maybe the page views are enough validation for you.

I don’t know, I just don’t care for my own personal blogging anymore. When I did, I was probably seeking human connection out of loneliness. Before blog analytics existed, I made friends through blog comments.

Analytics didn’t result in social connections but it did tickle the reward function. That’s why it exists.

I stopped using analytics on all of my projects for a while now. I've got blogs and actual saas (non-commercial) out there. And to this day I dont know if zero people or more are actually using it.

The reason is: a) I do these things first and foremost for myself and I share them because maybe they are useful for other people (but I dont mind if they are not). And b) I always intend to publish my "products" without needing a cookie banner.

And it also gives me a lot of peace of mind.

The beauty of sharing things is the feedback you get from others, which then gives you validation that something you're interested in is something others are also interested in or derive value from.

When making a blog post, how else do you get this feedback? 99% of people click, read it, then move on. Quantifying how many people have read, how long they spent reading, and where they came from, is an essential part of interacting with the digital world. Without it you are flying blind.

There is a middle ground. Maybe one need not add third party privacy invading analytics but there are simple self hosted solutions that have been around for ages and probably covers most of what people are looking for such as AWStats [1]. Logs can be merged into a centralized tiny web server on ones private network and that node can be running AWStats. Demo [2]. Main site [3].

[1] - https://github.com/eldy/AWStats

[2] - https://www.nltechno.com/awstats/awstats.pl?config=destaille...

[3] - https://www.awstats.org/

Back in the 90s I had old school visitor counters on all my websites (the kind that looked like an odometer). I got rid of them after I was displeased with how few visitors I got, and it felt like a badge of shame more than anything else.

IMO you lose a bit of authenticity when you start pandering to your audience to boost your numbers, which seems like a silly thing to do for a personal blog.

I'm totally fine with people who usually write about tech and suddenly write about baking, it makes life in my RSS reader that much more fun. If they optimized their "reach" they probably wouldn't include those gems.

I don’t think all analytics are evil. There’s a spectrum. Those old number of visitors stamps were fun and harmless. On the other end of the spectrum we have megacorps connecting services and building shadow profiles of people. There’s a lot of room in between.

I think there is some nuance to this: to me, it makes a difference whether you are counting page views in a coarse-grained, anonymous fashion, or whether you are going through all the hoops to find out as much as technically possible about all visitors.

I have some basic analytics on my blog as well. I’m just curious “what’s going on” on my website, in the same way as e.g. a shop owner in real life is aware of what’s going in their store. Publishing things on the internet can feel quite anonymous for the most part anyways, so at least I find it nice to have some rough insight into basic traffic patterns.

I write because I have something to share. It's not just for me. But also for others in the hope that they would find it useful.

I can corelate my rushed writing and writing that I took enough time with, using analytics. There are so many things for which analytics are useful for. A lot of them doesnt have anything to do with tracking and doing surveillance on users. It is mostly for giving you a signal and direction on the things you write etc.

And I use GoatCounter analytics specifically cos it is client side and doesn't collect PII. It can be turned off by folks. Server logs doesn't give any option to users so I don't use them.

https://www.unsungnovelty.org/about/#privacy

I get by with Apache log analysis with webalizer or goaccess.

I used to have Google analytics on the site but then I decided what for - so I removed that.

I’m strictly against collecting data from users unless absolutely necessary, and never without their consent.

As for technology stripping us of our humanity, I could not agree less. I think it’s helped us connect better with each other across different countries and cultures, broadening what was for many a fairly narrow view of the world. Technologies like computers and the Internet are also amazing tools for aiding humanity in our creativity and exploration of everything.

And as for the constraints they may place upon you it’s no different then government, economy or religion. They are all constructs designed to control you. Best you can do is realize that and live with it as best you can. That or go hermit I suppose, it’s a valid choice.

> I realised that knowing about my website visitors had zero effect on anything in the real world.

I'm in the process of trying to monetize a concept I discussed in one of my blog posts. I wouldn't have realized the idea was valuable, or that other people didn't find it obvious, if not for analytics.

I will agree with the general sentiment of the post: that there is a moral duty not to surveil readers of your blog. Personally, I find https://www.goatcounter.com/ strikes the right balance.

I enjoy looking at my blogs analytics. It does make my day better knowing that people find my writing useful and read my posts. Do I need it? Probably not. But I don’t “need” a blog either. I just like it.

They're not important, but we're also simple creatures who find it amusing when some numbers go up. And KPI's can also be fun for things like A/B testing etc. You could even rig something for some positive reinforcement to send a notification when a post is overperforming.

But I haven't found any analytics tools that strike the right balance; they either are too unwieldy, or they're absurdly simplistic.

These days, going viral is very much a double-edged sword, and getting a heads up is useful in more ways than one.

A quick plug for https://www.goatcounter.com/ - a super lightweight visitor counter. Very much privacy oriented (https://www.goatcounter.com/help/gdpr).

I've set it up on my blog a while ago (https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2023/using-goatcounter-for-blo...) and it's been working really well.

Once upon a time, my personal website, used to be well trafficked. Heck, I got a girlfriend because the analytics counter[1] on my website didn’t stay still but keep increasing. I had to had coffee and show the stats to prove to her that it is not an auto-script, that people actually do visit my website. That that is how I got that girlfriend.

After 20+ years, I have gotten rid of all analytics, comments, SEO-thang, etc. https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/

EDIT: It does have the analytics by Cloudflare. My personal website is reporting 30.91K Unique visitors last 30-days. If I include the ones I have separated and earmarked as documentations, archives of old Knowledge Base, etc. in total says 1.05M Pageviews while serving up over 107GB of bandwidth in the last 30 days. Beware, this is Cloudflare and I'm not privy to their details. I'm also going to assume a lot of them are bots these days.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mint_(web_analytics_software)

As long as you're not funneling this data to the Big Tech/Big Cloud/Big Ads, possibly self hosting and partially anonymizing data, and using it for personal purposes, I feel like it's fine. Web is lonely, so watching numbers go up and seeing that, for example, your writing is being read around the world can be a huge motivator to continue creating.

I don’t think server side analytics are surveillance at all.

It’s like if a shop is doing inventory and knows which product is bought how often. There’s no information for the visitor to volunteer, because every visitor should know that the shop/webserver knows when a visitor visits.

> The other reason you might put analytics on your site is to know when someone links to your writing. Again, if the linker doesn’t intend to tell you, then you’re surveilling. You do not need to know every time your writing is mentioned.

Assuming this is done with the referrer header, I also don’t see how this is bad. That’s the whole point of the thing, if you don’t want that as a user, disable it in your browser.

I ditched Google Analytics on my blog because it more than doubled the size of any page load (the “Universal” version loaded a lot of additional JS). This was fine for a while, as I wasn’t posting much. Later, I wanted to write more. This might be shallow, but I found having numbers associated with my writing helped me keep at it. I also found it fun and useful to see what got traction. I tried Plausible for a while, but it was overkill for my needs, and I grew out of the first tier quickly. I then moved to Tinylytics [0], and have been enjoying that.

[0] - https://tinylytics.app/

Vanity is a powerful force. When I was younger and actually blogging, the numbers (views, links, comments) were the exciting bit. They really kept me going. I was blogging for simple popularity, not altruism.

The maturity to shrug off this need for validation reaches some faster than others. I broadly agree that GA-level stats aren't helpful, but also if you're going into writing, having feedback mechanisms can help, even if it's just a hit of dopamine when you boastfully weather Digg and /. at the same time.

I don't "need" anything except a parenteral nutrition IV drip and a bedpan. I "want" to view my little visitors.php page on occation and see some friend in Oakland browsed around.

> You do not need “analytics” for your blog because you are neither a military surveillance unit nor a commodity trading company

I also don't need a post to tell me what I or my blog needs.

[I gotta stop engaging on low-bar content.]

Knowing who links to you can be valuable, especially in a niche field, because it tells you who else has a blog or social media account or web page on the same topic or a similar one. Then you link to them and make them feel included in a community.

The only way is to make that illegal, and many other tracking done by Google and Facebook.

I dropped GA and all other trackers off my blog after I realized I would just sit there staring at the live dashboard for hours after pressing post, begging the number to go up.

you can simply selfhost Plausible or other not-invasive analytics to see all aggregated info you might need. it will be 100% yours and compliant with all sorts of privacy laws and principles

I would like to know how many people visit the blog and from which countries. It can be used to measure it reaches people at all.

1. Yes

2. I use SimpleAnalytics

3. I think Search Console is useful

4. But then, really?

PS: Over the last year, my impression in search more than doubled, my clicks fell 75% #AgeOfAI

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Ignorance is bliss.

I feel like nowadays, whatever you write for your blog will end up in an LLM and people will get the information from there.

So if you have a blog in the hope of getting a lot of traffic, well good luck.

The only reason I see to keep writing a blog in 2025 is to build your portfolio, which may be beneficial when looking for a job.

an old man shouting at The Cloud(s)

I was intrigued at this post's emphasis on militarization as the source of pretty much all the digital technology we use today (not technically incorrect for the internet, not so sure about computers in general), combined with a really neat dropshadow /caption effect on the central image of a prison. Certainly that we started with "military command and control" and ended up with "cool dropshadow effect on captioned images", im not sure we stayed on track creating strictly a weapon of war.

He is right.

The web is now overrun and now full of rampant AI agents, bots and crawlers anyway so analytics are more likely going to be fake.

Especially for a blog where nobody is going to visit it except for bots.

This is probably the only time for the author that humans will visit his blog, but author wouldn't want to know that anyway.

you don't need analytics for most of the stuff you do.

I mean - it's fine to not have analytics if you like to write but be honest about it at least. You don't care about what writing your audience engages with. If you were giving presentations you'd get questions and comments at the end. Since a blog is typically read/delivered in async fashion distributed across regions the only feedback you get is via analytics.

Seems to just be one more link in the kooky "everyone is out to get me" chain of thought.

Bit of a strange argument frankly.

Some sort of "is this resonating with people" signal is I think useful.

Same reason I look at votes on my old comments. If something gets heavily downvoted then it's probably worth relooking at the comment and trying to figure out why. Maybe my comment was just crap. Maybe it was good but just too contrarian for the audience. Maybe it was ambiguous. Either way there is usually something to be learned from strong signals - both upvotes and down.

There is probably a tendency to overengineer this though. Chances are the default analytics page on your CDN provider is entirely adequate for above basic signal.

> The computer. The Internet. Artificial intelligence. These are military technologies, first and foremost... [0]

If you look at analytics or the internet or military-born technologies as applied to people in capitalism, you are but cattle to be utilized for your full value. In that way you can easily be mathematically whittled down to a statistic. More importantly so that these technologies are a way to control cattle in their currently applied capitalistic state. A tool of capitalism in brief.

As tools of capitalism, analytics are needed if you're trying to run a business. I believe the popularity of analytics on blogs is a conflation between old ideas (guest books/visitor counters) and an effort to make your blog a passive income earner. Analytics allow you to turn your site into a business which you optimize for your visitors. However this totally shifts a website owner's focus from hobby and interest sharing to blog post output optimization.

But the current state is that society values any increase in income as smart and savvy. Even if the entire indie web shuts down analytics, what about the people stuck on Facebook (et al), TikTok, and Twitter being subsumed by analytics? Someone will build a new "cool place" to hang out that will be the next cutting edge marketing platform for media culture, entertainment, etc. I'm not entirely convinced this change will snip at the root in a meaningful way.

[0] https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/swords-into-plowshare...

(btw that quote and blog post is very beautiful explanation of the root)

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