Can we start distinguishing between basic stats and surveillance? It sounds like this author also disabled web server logs as any knowledge of traffic is deep surveillance. Is this really the way?

Maybe some people get motivated or improve content by knowing what gets actually clicked. There is a huge difference between reading web server logs and adding third party services to the websites that track everything.

I did. I saw in analytics that an april's fools thingie was by far the most popular page on my blog. I then decided to expand it into a web minigame. Now that web minigame has more visitors than my entire blog. I would never have pursued it without analytics.