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Comment by raspyberr | Hacker News Reader

It's really tough to read this with any sense of sincerity when it uses Google fonts and "feeds the beast" that is Cloudflare.

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Touche. You are absolutely right. I will remove these too, but haven't gotten round it to it yet.

In which case, I do agree with a lot of what you say. There are many alternatives to what Google offers for website builders nowadays. It's just most people aren't aware of them. Many guides will just say use Google fonts and use Google analytics.

I found third party CDNs were almost always the cause when my personal site felt slow. My personal server responds quickly every time, because it's not subject to the same heavy traffic fluctuations that CDNs are.

To that end, I serve all the font files from the server and run a self-hosted analytics tool. Most Google fonts are just conveniently hosted fonts from third-party foundries, so it's not like you are supporting Google by downloading them.

And Disqus.

It does serve to highlight just how ubiquitous these platforms are though.

Disqus has just been switched off!

For my website system [Hello Website][hw], I built a non-tracking visitor statistics part. I also got rid of Google Fonts in the process. So no cookie-wall, no tracking, and I can honestly say the stats are accurate with 15000 page views a month. I even wrote a [blog post][blogpost] about it; as a webdev you have the responsibility to use Google Analytics or not. It's poison. Hello Website is for end-users who can easily design and fill their site with it, but if you are a developer I suggest using GoatCounter or Simple Analytics. [hw]: https://www.hellowebsite.online [blogpost]: https://www.hellowebsite.online/?module=blog&link=1&post=4

Well, what did you expect them to use? The built-in system fonts of the user??? :S

What’s wrong with Cloudflare? They’re not an ad company, are they?

We are not.

We have GOT to stop confusing the messenger with the message.

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