[TeMPOraL]

> How is something like having Google Analytics on your site "shady shit"? I would think counting unique visitors is a legitimate business interest for most businesses.

Just because it's free and somewhat nice looking, doesn't mean it isn't shady shit. Maybe all you care about is counting unique visitors, but by doing that with Google Analytics, you're exposing your visitors to a complex surveillance product that collects data for its own purposes, and it sees much more than what's needed to just count unique visits.

[HenryBemis]

What people don't see about GA, is that the data doesn't stop at you: "here is your data, X unique visitors, have a nice day".

It has a wider lifecycle: "this is YOUR data, and we collect, maintain, process, sell these data to a myriad other sources for a myriad other purposes". GA just feeds these monsters.

Most GA users just don't care about their clients/readers privacy. Or they care 'a little' but they care 'a lot more' in monetizing.

We externalize the costs, or find shady revenue streams. As long as people think "it's free therefore it is good and I like it" we are not progressing.