Google and other third party scripts can bring about a number of debatable privacy concerns, when it's simply not needed. It would be really nice to just have them removed.

There are always more FOSS/Privacy friendly options to be used. Especially in this day, Google is on every site and everywhere, and it can create a central point of both power, as well as failure (less in this case because it's just analytics, but sites that rely on Google API's, fonts, etc.) instead of more decentralized alternatives.

Again the privacy issue also persists with these third party dependencies as well. Decentralized, foss (/self-hosted) alternatives are the way to go. Or nothing at all.

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=24004
Which gives a little more technical side of it.

If we really need analytics, here are a few https://github.com/onurakpolat/awesome-analytics#privacy-focused-analytics
I'd suggest self-hosted, free and open source solutions.

However I think we need to consider if analytics are really even needed here, and personally I think we don't.

Why not just install uMatrix onto your browser if you haven't already?

[img]http://www.dragonflycave.com/wpay/mew.gif[/img]

I agree, and there are many other ways to block it locally as well.

However, there are some issues with Google Analytics still being present on the root site, despite blocking locally.

For one, Google Analytics will still affect all users who do not take action to block Google Analytics.

Two, if theoretically most visitors did block Google Analytics, they will be pretty inaccurate and not representative anyways so it defeats the purpose of having them.

Three, website owners are still in full control of tracking, and out-logging that information to third parties such as Google when there is no real need is just feeding Google massive amounts of information and is invasive to visitor privacy.

Even if anonymous, it has been proven over and over that "anonymous" data collection, can generally be very easily re-linked to people, and users.
And I want to be clear, this is not just about Mangaupdates users, but also any visitors, and I'm not exactly trying to direct this to Mangaupdates, but websites in general. In my opinion, this is an issue, and not having Google Analytics present in the first place, is far better than individual users blocking it locally.

I understand this is a hot topic, however I truly think Google Analytics should be considered removed.
If we truly need analytics, a self-hosted, privacy friendly, free and open source alternative would be a much better solution.

https://github.com/onurakpolat/awesome-analytics#privacy-focused-analytics

However, I think it needs to be questioned whether or not we really need analytics like such in the first place, as in my opinion I don't find them necessary here. That is my opinion though, and I've provided other alternatives if needed.