Why I removed Codepen embeds from my home page…

I've been a huge fan Codepen, and by extension Chris Coyier, for a really long time now. I wouldn't be nearly as good of a UI/UX Engineer as I am today, or as proficient with HTML/CSS/JS, if Codepen did not exist. Not only because of myself—challenging myself to finish and publish small ideas that I wouldn't have normally completed—but also because of the community of other developers/engineers/designers that I've learned from through code they've shared. People like Ana Tudor, Yoav Kadosh, and Natalia Davydova just to name a few.

I've been a Codepen PRO subscriber quite a while¹! So, I'm obviously a big fan of what Codepen is all about. So, why then have I removed the Codepen embeds from my home page?

Privacy

I've been thinking a lot recently about indieweb, net-privacy, user-tracking, and AI harvesting. And, for me, I think these are topics that I want to spend more time thinking about and doing something about this year and the next. I think these are big topics, that are complex and nuanced. But this something that I can do something about today: limit the exposure for sites that I have 100% control over. Namely, this one. I don't use any other user-trackers or analytics. I don't really care about tracking clicks or impressions or funneling people to affiliate links. So, while I don't think or have any reason to suspect that Codepen is doing anything untoward, it is the only third-party cookie that is on this site. And I'd like to change that…

So, I'm taking embeds out and replacing them with static images that will link to the service instead. After all, Codepen is still a service that I love and use often. However, I think the right call for me; not to opt-in everyone who happens to visit the site and just hope everything is legit.🤞

Conclusion

I know its small thing and probably not that important. In the grand scale of the challenges that we face in the near-future, it's admittedly small. But, like I said, it's maybe a tiny, little step-in-the-right-direction.