"Lightweight alternatives to Google Analytics"
Awesome article on concerns with using GA and a great review of Plausible Analytics too! 😍
@markosaric I would really prefer that we discourage people from spying on visitors in the first place. 9 times out of 10, analytics only exists to deposit dopamine into the site owners.
@sir who is to say that that's a bad thing. Knowing that people read your articles, or visit your website can provide serious motivation.
write.as has a view count for my articles. I don't particularly care about what that number is, but it is nice when it gets over a thousand or so... I wouldn't say that I'm spying on anyone by checking this. That could be like saying knowing how many views a video has is spying. To me, it isn't.
@freddyym you could get the same info by running awk over your HTTP logs. Client-side analytics is much more invasive.
@sir fair enough.
@markosaric @freddyym
>server logs are not "pretty enough", not "accurate" and not "user friendly"
This alone should tell you that it's about vanity. They're spying on people for vanity. Despicable.
@markosaric @freddyym I'm not convinced by alledgedly lesser evils. How about no evil, goddammit
@markosaric @freddyym my answer is to use ublock origin to tell them to get fucked, really. If you can't get it through your head that spying on people is not okay then I am not really interested in empathising with you
@markosaric @freddyym installing ublock origin is pretty easy, I've suggested it to many non-technical users and they got on just fine without my direct intervention.
@markosaric @sir @freddyym is that true?
I am FOR a reasonable, viable analytics solution for the small business owners I work with alternative to GA.
I feel like scum implementing GA because I am scum implementing GA. That said, I work for businesses that I think have good intentions procuring products that make my life more enjoyable. Part of my GA decision is lazy.
(Cont.)
@markosaric @sir @freddyym Can we imagine an analytics solution that collects exclusively anonymous user data that is still disagreeable? I am truly interested in your opinions.
@deianeira @markosaric @freddyym it's generally not as anonymous as they'd like you to think. Correlations are often pretty easy to make. Don't spy on users! It's that easy.
@markosaric @sir @freddyym this whole thing reminds me of how the US tried to make death penalty more humane through decades. In the process they chopped people's heads, gave them poison, electrocuted them (all of which were torture).
No one asked if death penalty should be a thing in the first place.
@karan @sir @freddyym your bio says you work for google?
and you're comparing killing people to people wanting to check if someone finds value in something they spend tons of time and resources building?
try and take that argument with a business owner or website owner that uses GA today and let me know how it works
@markosaric This looks pretty, accurate, and quite user-friendly to me
https://rt.goaccess.io
@amolith i haven't tested their accuracy. i do know that something like awstats is off by some 200-300% depending on the metric which is just not good enough to most who use GA
@freddyym @sir i get what you mean but this kind of solution is not good enough for most site owners. been speaking to many last few weeks and server logs are not "pretty enough", not "accurate" and not "user friendly"
more than half of all websites online use GA and getting them to switch to something like that is pretty difficult.
getting some of these sites to consider switching away from GA to a less invasive alternative is still difficult but much more likely to succeed.