Today, I posted a link [2] to a blog post of mine on HN, but instead of linking directly, I used my YOURLS URL shortener. In the span of about 2 hours, I saw ~350 clicks counted on the shortened URL. When I checked the raw hits from my GoatCounter data, there were exactly 7 hits recorded\u20143 of which had hackernews.com as the referrer.
I was expecting that a good number of HN users might be using AdBlock or VPNs, but 98% of my traffic being blocked or filtered seems unusually high.\nIs this a common experience for anyone else here? Do most HN users have AdBlock, VPNs, or other privacy tools that block tracking scripts?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34265127\n[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097184"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Are 98% of HN Readers Using AdBlock?"}},"_tags":["story","author_7777777phil","story_46099563","ask_hn"],"author":"7777777phil","children":[46099657,46100928],"created_at":"2025-11-30T19:25:06Z","created_at_i":1764530706,"num_comments":3,"objectID":"46099563","points":1,"story_id":46099563,"story_text":"I\u2019ve GoatCounter [1], a "privacy-friendly" site visit counter that tracks pageviews by inserting a small JavaScript snippet on my website for some weeks now.
Today, I posted a link [2] to a blog post of mine on HN, but instead of linking directly, I used my YOURLS URL shortener. In the span of about 2 hours, I saw ~350 clicks counted on the shortened URL. When I checked the raw hits from my GoatCounter data, there were exactly 7 hits recorded\u20143 of which had hackernews.com as the referrer.
I was expecting that a good number of HN users might be using AdBlock or VPNs, but 98% of my traffic being blocked or filtered seems unusually high.\nIs this a common experience for anyone else here? Do most HN users have AdBlock, VPNs, or other privacy tools that block tracking scripts?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34265127\n[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097184","title":"Ask HN: Are 98% of HN Readers Using AdBlock?","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:10:57Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"mercurial"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["yourls"],"value":"Sure, but consider the common case of wanting the most recent file/directory in a directory. This would be something like "ls -t|head -n 1". It's pretty convenient, AND your ls function still returns only file and directory names, no additional information.
Here, you'd need to either parametrize the return type of ls to get simple strings (which is what you want most of time) or additional metadata, or alternatively to have different ls commands."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Use Haskell for shell scripting"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.haskellforall.com/2015/01/use-haskell-for-shell-scripting.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_mercurial","story_8970733"],"author":"mercurial","comment_text":"Sure, but consider the common case of wanting the most recent file/directory in a directory. This would be something like "ls -t|head -n 1". It's pretty convenient, AND your ls function still returns only file and directory names, no additional information.
Here, you'd need to either parametrize the return type of ls to get simple strings (which is what you want most of time) or additional metadata, or alternatively to have different ls commands.","created_at":"2015-01-30T16:09:59Z","created_at_i":1422634199,"objectID":"8972668","parent_id":8972175,"points":null,"story_id":8970733,"story_title":"Use Haskell for shell scripting","story_url":"http://www.haskellforall.com/2015/01/use-haskell-for-shell-scripting.html","updated_at":"2023-09-06T23:24:04Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"dublinben"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["yourls"],"value":"I'm amazed that they thought it was a smart business decision to rely on a free bit.ly account (with their own domain!) instead of running their own URL shortener. Yourls (https://yourls.org/) is free and open source, and has been around for years. There's an excellent reason why every major publisher operates their own URL shortening service, and this article demonstrates it perfectly."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Bit.ly's shady business model"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://ozkatz.github.io/bitlys-shady-business-model.html?hn"}},"_tags":["comment","author_dublinben","story_7883670"],"author":"dublinben","comment_text":"I'm amazed that they thought it was a smart business decision to rely on a free bit.ly account (with their own domain!) instead of running their own URL shortener. Yourls (https://yourls.org/) is free and open source, and has been around for years. There's an excellent reason why every major publisher operates their own URL shortening service, and this article demonstrates it perfectly.","created_at":"2014-06-12T15:11:50Z","created_at_i":1402585910,"objectID":"7883819","parent_id":7883670,"story_id":7883670,"story_title":"Bit.ly's shady business model","story_url":"http://ozkatz.github.io/bitlys-shady-business-model.html?hn","updated_at":"2024-09-19T20:59:02Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ozh"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["yourls"],"value":"Using YOURLS - http://yourls.org -- this would be trivial to do with a plugin"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Are there any user-agent aware url shorteners out there?"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":""}},"_tags":["comment","author_ozh","story_7799080"],"author":"ozh","comment_text":"Using YOURLS - http://yourls.org -- this would be trivial to do with a plugin","created_at":"2014-05-26T08:52:45Z","created_at_i":1401094365,"objectID":"7799122","parent_id":7799080,"story_id":7799080,"story_title":"Ask HN: Are there any user-agent aware url shorteners out there?","story_url":"","updated_at":"2024-09-19T20:50:31Z"}],"hitsPerPage":10,"nbHits":523274,"nbPages":100,"page":0,"params":"query=YOURLS&hitsPerPage=10&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":40,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"queue":197,"roundTrip":20},"afterFetch":{"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":3,"total":3},"total":4},"total":4},"fetch":{"query":4,"scanning":30,"total":35},"total":40},"query":"YOURLS","serverTimeMS":239}