No, GA will definitely increase it. I really don't know of a way before this that you could get referral links to an LJ post you made. LJ Toys didn't do it. Lots of people talk backchannel about other people, and before it's been more of a space where you could link to others and vent about them without them without them necessarily knowing, unless there was an informant in your midst.

But yes, I agree that people who create content might like to see who is viewing their content from where. A side effect is that some people who didn't know before how much people were watching them might either feel disappointed (not enough people!) or creeped out (they were unaware of all of the silent watchers).