1---
 2title: "Privacy-respecting analytics"
 3date: 2023-03-06T12:23:00-05:00
 4categories: ["Technology"]
 5tags: ["Privacy", "Web"]
 6draft: false
 7toc: false
 8---
 9
10For a long time, I was so vehemently opposed to analytics on personal websites
11that I condemned people using privacy-respecting systems like [Plausible] on
12their blog, shouting about mUh PrIvAcY and saying that these platforms only
13boosted the bloggers' ego and they would end up writing for their readers rather
14than personal enjoyment. I'm realising that I was kinda dumb 🤔
15
16[Plausible]: https://plausible.io/
17
18One of my clients recently asked me to add analytics to the website I created
19for them. I said yes and asked whether they had a preference as to which
20analytics system. They said no, they just wanted to see how many people were
21using the website and whether they were actually looking at the menu and store
22pages. I decided to set them up with [Umami] because it has a very simple UI,
23it's not affiliated with Big Tech™ companies, [it's GDPR-compliant,](umami-gdpr)
24and the script is only 2 KBs.
25
26[Umami]: https://umami.is/
27[umami-gdpr]: https://umami.is/docs/faq
28
29Analytics on a business's website is a no-brainer. Business websites should be
30pleasant, ergonomic, and useful for their customers and analytics do assist with
31that goal. But what about on personal websites? The big reason Google Analytics
32is so often condemned is because of Google; you bet your ass they're aggregating
33all the data they harvest from their collective properties and associating that
34information with your visitors' profiles (yes, even if they don't have a Google
35account) to improve their advertising engine. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. do
36exactly the same thing with all of their like/share buttons. They're ingesting
37as much data as they can to feed their ad systems and I don't want to further
38their mass surveillance of the internet.
39
40The privacy issues with analytics primarily apply to the big providers that
41aggregate everything across their customers' properties in order to surveil as
42many people as possible. Systems like Umami are different. The minimal data
43that's collected is anonymised and stays in-house, on your (preferrably)
44self-hosted server. When you really give it some thought, there's nothing
45inherently wrong with knowing how many visitors your site has, what pages
46they're viewing, and what website they came from.
47
48I enabled Umami on my website shortly after coming to this realisation and [made
49the analytics page public.][public]
50
51[public]: https://umami.secluded.site/share/7PNXq2e8/Secluded.Site
52
53The referrers section is fascinating when you bump the period from "Today" to
54"All time". There are some unusual search engines, a couple onion addresses,
55another of my own websites [(scratchanitch.dev)][sai], and even some personal
56ones. After seeing other individuals link to my website, I had the idea to use
57GitHub's [Code Search] feature to poke around and see [where else it was
58mentioned.][cs-results]
59
60[sai]: https://scratchanitch.dev/
61[Code Search]: https://github.com/features/code-search/
62[cs-results]: https://github.com/search?q=%22secluded.site%22&type=code
63
64A suprising number of people seem to be referencing my _[Vim as a Markdown
65Editor][vme]_ post. I haven't thought about that post since I wrote it, much
66less updated it. Taking a look at Umami indicates that it's by far my most
67popular one. Maybe I should have another look at it and see if there's anything
68that needs to be improved ...
69
70[vme]: https://secluded.site/vim-as-a-markdown-editor/
71
72Knowing that there are people visiting my site and that some of the things I've
73written are useful is, frankly, quite encouraging. That's why I'm writing this
74post. That's part of what inspired my next one and it's why I intend to start
75writing more. I do enjoy writing, but the idea of tossing something I've spent
76hours on into the void of the internet isn't exactly motivating.
77
78As long as it isn't causing problems, I don't believe "boosting the blogger's
79ego" is inherently bad. Encouragement can be quite good 🙂