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Comment on Request to remove tracking from Go websites

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"We can't run a web site without knowing how people use the site, where they spend time on it, and so on. It just can't be done. Anyhow, if you care, everyone else is using Google Analytics, so shove off."

The problem with responses like these is that they're very much bullshit. If they just said, "we like it, and we're too lazy", that'd be much more honest. Google Analytics doesn't do anything that other kinds of tracking couldn't do.

So, in a nutshell, these folks are basically saying that analytics are so important that they outweigh the intrusion, but they're not important enough to implement their own analytics.

But most importantly and unlike many (most?) open source projects, it was made without regards for whether others feel strongly enough to offer to do the work. "I don't want to do it" in many projects can be answered with, "if you don't want to do it, I'll do it." That's not an option here, and that's why I think the response is bullshit.

Their response is even more hollow when you consider the extent to which ad and content blockers are used in the developer community. I sincerely hope that they're not basing any important decisions on the data they collect in this way.

Implement a page visit frequency map in Go. Boom.

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