How about just not tracking people?

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This blog runs on the open-source Ghost platform, on my own Digital Ocean instance. There are no pop-up banners warning you about cookies. And no privacy policies or terms and conditions. Why? Because it doesn't track you.

Google provides a free tracking script you can add to your website that allows you to see an almost inconceivable amount of information about people who visit your website. Why does Google give it away for free? Because they get access to this information as well. And for one ad company to have so much information cannot be a good ting.

I've set up my own instance of open-source tracking software Matomo (formerly known as Piwik) in the past, but started to wonder why I'm doing it at all in the first place. It makes the page slower to load, and knowing how many people visit the website is not that useful.

Indeed, for my tiny blog, knowing the exact number of website visitors can be counter-productive. Now that I don't know how many people read this, I can focus on the writing instead of how to make people come to the blog. But even for much larger sites, there must be better ways to measure your impact.