I’m the developer of Disconnect and agree with you, but …
To back up the op and gp, I’m seeing more and more sites that don’t degrade gracefully when their analytics service doesn’t load. I do think devs should check that their site still works when non-essential services fail to load because, even when the user isn’t running Disconnect or a similar app, this scenario is bound to happen — e.g., when there’s a network issue somewhere.
As the developer of Disconnect, if you're removing chunks of functionality the site developers expect to be there, you should be doing it in a way that doesn't break that functionality so absolutely.
You could cloak the cookies so they're pageview specific. Or inject your own functions in place of the ones that are being blocked.
Whether analytics is an essential service or not is a pretty up in the air question.
No. I'm suggesting that if you're writing an extension that changes the way javascript works across the web, you should do it in the least intrusive and breaking way possible.
An extension like this changes a javascript load error from a once-in-a-while event to a happens-all-the-time event.
I can't imagine a situation where you need to know analytics are being consumed in order to give users the data they want (unless the site in question is itself an analytics site).
To allow / cause your site to break when analytics aren't served is, in essence, attempting to enforce an unspoken contract between gathering user info and serving them data.
As far as I'm concerned, a site that doesn't work when analytics aren't served is a site I will literally never use.
Many companies consider controlling essential to do business.
But even if you disagree, you would do end user support a huge favor if you could mention that "It alters the webpages you visit and may break them." next to the download button.
Not a bad idea, but I'm thinking that most folks who are savvy enough to install Disconnect, Ghostery, NoScript, etc. are going to be aware that "stuff might break."
An online article, friends or family send people to Disconnect and they click the install button. After that it protects them by "disconnecting" from "tracking sites". I promise you most people have no idea how it works. Don't believe me, try it: if you see a normal person using Disconnect let them explain to you what it does, how it works and also ask what the Disconnect visualizer says about who is sending data to whom.
