Why I Stopped Tracking Traffic on My Personal Sites
An empty bench in front of a calm river on a sunny day • Photo © Ayo Ayco
Back in 2021, I deleted my Facebook account that had thousands of connections, and created a new one just for closest family members and friends.
Some time before that, I deleted an older Twitter account with hundreds of followers to create a new one that I wanted to be more focused. (My Twitter is now also deleted as of 22nd of March, 2024)
I’ve always been in a love-hate relationship with the online presence game… but maybe that’s another story.
It’s quite liberating, but apparently those were just the beginning of my “cutting ties” with big tech.
I realized that I was never happy about being tracked. Why should I do that to others?
So recently I deleted all the scripts on my personal sites that use cookies to track visitors.
The Social Media Business Model
I wasn’t happy with companies earning from my personal information and communication; not to mention the destructive nature of their algorithms pushing misinformation just because those things generate more engagement.
Back in 2014, Facebook funded a research to test if they can control users’ emotions and modify their behavior.
It was no surprise then, when a couple of years later, millions of people voted for a dictator who used Facebook to be the next president in my country.
Somebody profited from this and it has never been better for people ever since.
Removing Tracking from This Blog
Well that was a bit heavy for a blog about removing analytics ain’t it?
In a recent commit to this blog’s code, I removed all tracking scripts.
I never even checked Analytics anyway.
It feels good to be free from numbers that measure my social performance… and I don’t really intend to be successful in the online influencer game.
Practically, I find that if you play in that game you end up just creating content that pleases the majority of people; and somehow I doubt that’s a good indication that you are doing a good job. 🤣
To cut the long story short, I was never really motivated by that and I see there’s more negative impact.
So now I can just focus on putting out more content and “logging” my life’s journey on the web… Let’s go back to the roots of web logging.