> People say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website.

HN has surveillance tech?

> Most probably, there is Google Analytics and Facebook pixel on the very site you are building right now.

Nope. I haven't used any of those since 2016. None of the apps I build for iOS have third party analytics, trackers or even ads. I solely rely on a single one time only in app purchase for monetization. Even my OCR app does all its processing locally on the device itself and none of the data leaves the device. I have a mood tracker app which obviously has a lot of intimate, confidential and private data from users - the data stays on their device and if they use iCloud syncing, then to Apple's server (despite all of Apple's flaws, they do seem to be doing much better when it comes to privacy). I have a school timetable app which also has lot of confidential data. Same thing on that app too - everything stays locally on the device or iCloud if user chooses. I DO NOT want user data. I have a site which is a resume builder which users input a lot of confidential data. Even that site never transfers any of the user data and everything is stored locally on the browser. There isn't even any ads or analytics on the site as can be confirmed by sniffing network requests. I had to spend couple extra weeks to get the PDF generation done locally in the browser instead of sending the user data to some server. This took extra time but it was worth it because I DO NOT WANT USER DATA. My Hacker News client app also has the same attention to privacy. I disclose to the user in the privacy policy that the only time the app accesses my own network is when it needs to fetch the favicon for the articles and I don't log these requests. I plan on adding notifications to that app and I will be disclosing that in the privacy policy that I will need to store the device token to be able to deliver the notifications. And the notifications will be opt-in so the user knows what data they are giving me to store. Other than that, I won't be using this for any tracking or other purposes.

Obviously I am aware I can make a lot more money if I put ads and trackers etc but I have been at a point for many years now where I would lose money and business if it means I get to starve the beast of some money. My customers appreciate my privacy policy and often email me or leave reviews appreciating the privacy policy. So there's a market for it (less money though and I am fine with that).

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...

Privacy policy for HACK:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cb282k7rrSi4awr0HizuRciX...

Here's another example of my resume builder's privacy policy:

https://resumetopdf.com/privacypolicy.html

Here's privacy policy for my MoodWell mood tracker:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19bIdiLwlnQxSIASNatVz8UpI...

Privacy policy for my Image Text OCR app:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f05TVHqZPnj8aM1d0b6y6u6H...

Simply saying one cares about privacy and users isn't sufficient. I think one has to really want to make less money and also have bitter feelings towards the beast to purposefully starve it if they want to care about user privacy.