---
title: "Why I Stopped Tracking Traffic on My Personal Sites"
permalink: /:title
image: bliss
image-attrib: Ayo Ayco
image-attrib-url: https://metapixl.com/p/ayo/566394313649618586
image-alt: An empty bench in front of a calm river on a sunny day
description: "I was never happy about being tracked, why should I do that to others?"
category: personal
---

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](https://twitter.com/ayoayco) that I wanted to be more focused.

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.<!--more-->

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](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds).

It was no surprise then, when a couple of years later, millions of people voted for [a dictator who used Facebook](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodrigo-duterte-turned-facebook-into-a-weapon-with-a-little-help-from-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](https://github.com/ayoayco/blog/commit/6e0b664a4fd51c3d9a7bbcb8f7b04c5967ff51c5) 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.