Whilst I still think referrers should be used where appropriate, there are certainly places or reasons you want to nix them. HTTPS not passing along referrers by default is a sensible decision, as is the addition of <meta name="referrer" content="never"> for sites stuck in HTTP that may want to go under the radar.
I still feel that removing referrers entirely destroys many useful tools and analytics that we've traditionally been able to use. It removes the core way in which we understand connections across the Internet. By removing referrers, the best we can do is use link graphs, falling back to the original PageRank algorithm where we assume people are random bots that click on one of the links on the page.
Edit: Can't reply to you hnriot due to comment depth limit. My reference to PageRank is as links and backlinks could be used as a poor referrer substitute, though they aren't currently used as it's a lot more work and less accurate. I'm simply saying that, in the event that referrers all disappeared tomorrow, you'd see normal websites trying to estimate where their traffic comes from by using a PageRank inspired algorithm, or more naively by looking at who links where.
Referrers have nothing to do with pagerank. It's used in website analytics of course, and, in general is a very bad idea leaking information between websites. Search engines don't see your site's referrer data so the association you tried to create with pagerank is misleading.
I, for one, didn't think his argument was remotely misleading.
I did, however, think that bringing PageRank into the argument was ill advised and probably detrimental to his goal of advocacy through education. It just confused things, introduced another rabbit-hole concept.
If the author thought that mentioning PageRank would lend credibility to the 'link counting' / 'random link clicking bots' foregone conclusion he setup., he was right. It did. So link the text to a footnote referencing PageRank and stay on topic.
I still feel that removing referrers entirely destroys many useful tools and analytics that we've traditionally been able to use. It removes the core way in which we understand connections across the Internet. By removing referrers, the best we can do is use link graphs, falling back to the original PageRank algorithm where we assume people are random bots that click on one of the links on the page.
Edit: Can't reply to you hnriot due to comment depth limit. My reference to PageRank is as links and backlinks could be used as a poor referrer substitute, though they aren't currently used as it's a lot more work and less accurate. I'm simply saying that, in the event that referrers all disappeared tomorrow, you'd see normal websites trying to estimate where their traffic comes from by using a PageRank inspired algorithm, or more naively by looking at who links where.