No tracking
Hey! This post's a little over two years old now, so some of what's here might be out of date. Still worth a read, but if anything really matters to you, it's worth double-checking against a newer source too.
As a web engineer, I believe that the web should be a place where individuals can freely access and interact with content without fear of being tracked or monitored. That's why I don't run any invasive tracking on this site, no Google Analytics, no ad pixels. The only thing running here is Vercel's built-in Web Analytics, which is cookieless and doesn't tie anything back to you personally.
There are several reasons for my decision to keep things this way. First and foremost, I rarely look at the numbers Vercel collects. I prefer to focus on creating engaging and useful content for my audience, rather than analysing data that may not be relevant or useful to me.
In addition, heavier tracking scripts add overhead to using a site. Every time you visit a website, a certain amount of data has to travel between the server and your browser, and third-party trackers like Google Analytics or a pixel add their own scripts and requests on top of that. By keeping this to Vercel's lightweight analytics and skipping the rest, the page you're reading loads a little faster.
Finally, I believe that the web should be anonymous unless the user wants to be known or a crime has taken place. There is no need to track every move that a user makes on the internet. This kind of tracking can be invasive and can lead to the exploitation of personal data. By avoiding third-party trackers, I am doing my part to protect the privacy and anonymity of my users.
Of course, there are situations where analytics tracking is genuinely useful, such as A/B testing or studying user behaviour to improve a design. But for a personal site like this one, I don't need to know who you are or what you clicked to know whether it's working, so I'd rather leave you to read in peace.