Related: the discussion about Goatcounter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22044854
Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
81–90 of 163 posts
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You automatically get that if you visit them from the EU and decline tracking, it’s amazing :)
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#83I see a lot of suggestions for free or open-source analytics packages, but I would refrain from recommending anything you haven't personally used. I've tried to separate myself from Google in various ways, and one of those was to replace Google Analytics with open source software. I tried several; they're all either non-functional out of the box, or require significant time investment to even start approaching Google…
If you're using AdSense, you're already giving Google your visitor data, no matter what visitor analytics package you use.
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#84Anybody ever heard of server logs?
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#85I tried Matomo (Piwik) recently, but I only do log analysis and it doesn't really treat log access as a first class citizen. If you use Javascript tracking, it's probably the right way to go.
I switched back to AWStats for my personal stuff. It's probably too basic for business or company apps, but for your personal stuff without javascript/cookies, it's still a great analytics tool.
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a fan of Fathom[0]. The amount of data and insight is light compared to GA and others but if it meets your needs it's pretty great. [0] https://github.com/usefathom/fathom
Do you know if fathom will remain opensource and/or self-hostable ? ( https://github.com/usefathom/fathom/issues/268 )
Nice answer from developer!:
> We are keeping this version open-source, forever, and committing to maintain it. We also have a business to run, and while we love open-source, it isn't paying our bills (and Fathom takes a lot of work from 2 people to keep going) and we're not a charity.
> If this repo was full of contributions and other folks pitching in, this would be a different story, but it's not—which is totally fine and accepted. But, since we want to keep going with Fathom, we have to separate V1 and V2 so we can make it sustainable. Otherwise we'd have to abandon it (which serves no one).
> If you truly want your complaint heard, maybe contribute to what you're complaining about (financially, time, effort, etc). My wife always tells me that I'm not allowed to gripe unless I'm also taking action.
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#87I have fun looking at these stats (sites with Google tracking vs. sites without) in a Firefox addon I made: https://bitbucket.org/tayler/google-spy/src/master/, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googley-eyes/
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or you could write the 10 lines of JavaScript that'll do what 99% of people use Google analytics for
This really reminds me of the infamous "you can just use FTP instead of Dropbox" comment.
Could you link me to the FTP vs. Dropbox discussion? I am curious. I haven't used either for years and the implication seems to be that there is a profound difference, so I wonder what it is.
Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#89Re: Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
#90I'm currently building a free analytics service that's the fastest. Ever. Faster than Fathom, Simple Analaytics, pretty much everything except Google Analytics you can think of.
Still building it, but you can sign up for when it launches here: https://forms.gle/MhojBWWfdiWjZatC7 (I know it's ironically on google forms and I'll move away soon)