Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

dev.to

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 163 posts

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#31

Post by guelo »

protonfish wrote: post #28
coldcode wrote: post #6

It would be handy if people listed here all the alternatives that don't steal your customer info.

Or just use server log analytics. Client-side analytics are a significant contributor to the proliferation of JavaScript bloat and unnecessary 3rd party cookies.

I've been surprised lately by how much more pleasant, readable and usable the news/blog-web is with JavaScript turned off. JavaScript is basically just used for the user-hostile ad-tech.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#32

Post by freehunter »

mateus1 wrote: post #26
runninganyways wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could write the 10 lines of JavaScript that'll do what 99% of people use Google analytics for

If you think you can replicate that with 10 lines you have no idea what Google Analytics is used for.

Those 10 lines probably depend on an npm package that relies on 100 other npm packages.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#33

Post by awb »

protonfish wrote: post #28
coldcode wrote: post #6

It would be handy if people listed here all the alternatives that don't steal your customer info.

Or just use server log analytics. Client-side analytics are a significant contributor to the proliferation of JavaScript bloat and unnecessary 3rd party cookies.

Agreed if you're already self-hosting. However, I don't know of a JS-free solution if you're hosting on a 3rd party like GitHub pages or Netlify for example.

(Netlify does sell access to log data but it looks expensive for most hobby / personal sites)

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#34

Post by Mirioron »

guelo wrote: post #31
protonfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use server log analytics. Client-side analytics are a significant contributor to the proliferation of JavaScript bloat and unnecessary 3rd party cookies.

I've been surprised lately by how much more pleasant, readable and usable the news/blog-web is with JavaScript turned off. JavaScript is basically just used for the user-hostile ad-tech.

I've been wondering about this recently: perhaps we'd actually be better off with simpler browsers that did less so that the websites would do less?

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#35

Post by marcosdumay »

benbristow wrote: post #27

Interesting that the page breaks if you're using Adblock because of Google Analytics being in the URL. Shows me a fun 'You are not connected to the internet' page that lets you doodle on the page.

Not on Firefox with uBlock Origin.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#36

Post by ElFitz »

StreamBright wrote: post #25

I have created a simple workflow using AWS Lambda + Kinesis + S3 to track our customers and not to have any 3rd party dependency. It took roughly 2 weeks but it is worth it since do not leak customer data and we have much tighter control over what we collect (no PII except the source ip that gets hashed in the process).

FYI, if your setup relies on API Gateway, you probably could use VTL / Mapping Templates to directly send from API Gateway to Kinesis and skip the lambda altogether, like some do for dynamodb

See https://hackernoon.com/serverless-and-lambdaless-scalable-cr... And https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/using-amazon-api-gatewa...

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#37

Post by falcolas »

lbrito wrote: post #2

So the solution is to use Amazon's tracker? I appreciate the problem and I would like to stop using GA in my static pages as well, but trading one privately-owned software from a tech giant for another privately-owned software from a different tech giant seems a bit ludicrous. I would readily swap GA for some decent open-source solution though.

I'd say the following to this (very reasonable) argument against using AWS: AWS makes money by selling services, not collecting data. Should Amazon make the leap and start harvesting data from AWS for marketing purposes, the data from their analytics platform will be the least of our worries.

Thus far, AWS has proven to be safe for companies to host their data upon, and there have been no leaks of data stored in AWS into Amazon's marketing program. The HIPPA, PCI, and FedRamp certifications help back up their claims that a company's AWS data stays in AWS.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#38

Post by anderspitman »

mateus1 wrote: post #26
runninganyways wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could write the 10 lines of JavaScript that'll do what 99% of people use Google analytics for

If you think you can replicate that with 10 lines you have no idea what Google Analytics is used for.

I'm ashamed to admit that I use GA on my blog to essentially count page views. The other information is interesting but mostly unused (by me). I would be far better served by a tool or service handling server logs (any recommendations?). But GA is 0 friction, so it's what I picked up back in the day. I suspect there are a lot of people in this boat.

Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics

#40

Post by cholmon »

guelo wrote: post #31
protonfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use server log analytics. Client-side analytics are a significant contributor to the proliferation of JavaScript bloat and unnecessary 3rd party cookies.

I've been surprised lately by how much more pleasant, readable and usable the news/blog-web is with JavaScript turned off. JavaScript is basically just used for the user-hostile ad-tech.

I recently found https://text.npr.org/ (linked down in the footer of the main NPR site) and it made me very happy.
Post reply on HN