You'll not be able to block the next generation of server-side analytics tools like Cloudflare Analytics [0] -- seems like that's a direct response to increasing block rates.
What I do care about and actively block is JavaScript trying to enumerate fonts or fingerprint my canvas or whatever is the latest and greatest web API abuse for fingerprinting.
Unfortunately, Cloudflare is in a position to do just that, just like major analytics providers.
https://www.teradata.com/Resources/White-Papers/Price-Perfor...
Or just what they're showing you?
It doesn't remotely do what people in this thread seems to think it does. Which is bizarre given you can go set up an account for free and see for yourself.
They seem to be confusing it with some of the third party ad tracking software. But GA is really dumb as a brick (and that's a feature, not a bug).
The concern isn't about what GA gives to its implementers, it's about what it collects internally.
Google is an advertising company and has a financial incentive to stalk everyone. Their bad faith implementation of the GDPR consent flow (which IMO does not actually comply, but the regulators are incompetent or unwilling to enforce the law) proves it. The current regulatory environment doesn't do enough to discourage non-consensual data collection, so given this fact and the company's past history we need to assume the worst until proven otherwise.
I went to visit a friend a few days ago. At some point she wanted to show me something on YouTube on her laptop. While staring surprised at the screen, I asked, "What is this? Is it what you wanted to show me?" She was as surprised as me, "No, of course not, this is just an ad." It felt very strange to me as I haven't seen an ad on YouTube for many years.
So I inquired, "You know adblockers exist, why do you put up with this crap?" She answered, "Yes, sometimes people tell me this, then I install it, and then something breaks, like YouTube layout or the comments don't load etc., so I uninstall it, this happens every few years."
So this gave me some insight why a non-technical person may choose not to use an adblocker. I fixed it for her and I hope she enjoys smooth experience for a few months.
It actually becomes a bit of an issue when some idiot somewhere designs a business process around client side tracking. I'm currently fixing a broken process with a client where their users can request an upgrade, and ~1/3 of them (the technical users from above) never even process because some yuckster built it all inside of the tracker.
I don't need the information Google Analytics provides and want to avoid 3rd party cookies - something like Cloudflare Analytics looks appealing, but I'd prefer an OSS, self-hosted solution.