i think this is not really related to the original idea in this thread, but it’s sort of similar to this other thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/show-number-of-reviewers-for-an-observation/38623.
i tend to agree that collecting raw view counts and/or allowing folks to see who has viewed their stuff is a bad idea. i wouldn’t mind iNat saying generally how many people look at an average observation or an average journal post, but i don’t think most people would be able to do anything useful with those kinds of metrics on specific observations and posts.
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that said, people who really want to track that kind of data should be able to do that on their own. for example, you could just add a small image file in your observation description or journal post, and if you control the image file, you should be able to count the number of times that image file is served up, which should be roughly equivalent to views of the particular observation or journal post. i think there used to be a free service that would serve up these image files for you and keep track of how many hits, but i forget what this service was called, and i don’t know if they are still active.