Why YSK: Trackers don’t do good for anyone except the platform, and they’re not necessary to view the content in the URL.
It’s courteous to not subject the recipient (most likely your friends and family) to this tracking. You’re already sending them to the platform, which is tracking them in other ways. But you can help reduce that tracking by removing everything after the ampersand in the URL. Here are some examples.
Twitter example
URL: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20
The s=20 is a Twitter-specific parameter to show that the tweet was copied from the web app. s=46 is iOS, and I can’t remember what Android’s code is. This is a relatively clean link, but there are some links that’ll concatenate unique identifiers, like: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20&t=Fn47fnSDJUD74bd9.
In this case, you’ll notice there’s also a &t= parameter, which is a unique identifier to the person who shared it.
The only part of the URL you need is https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937.
Instagram example:
URL: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB/?igshid=MzRlODCFWFlZA==
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB.
TikTok example
You’ll notice TikTok’s is a lot more readable in terms of what the URL contains.
The is_from_webapp parameter is self-explanatory, as is the sender_device, and then there’s the identifier that’s unique to you. In this case, 7302915057791436331.
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.tiktok.com/@inthepaintcrew/video/7301348328602717482.
The best route1 would be to use privacy-respecting frontends, but if you don’t, simply deleting everything after the ampersand goes a long way.
1The best route would actually be to not use/reward platforms that are literally destroying humanity, but we’re not there yet, so… in the meantime, let’s just try to decrease the tracking and stop subjecting our friends and family to it as much as possible.
Tldr, anything after a ‘?’ In a url is unnecessary.
Not always, but it’s a good rule of thumb.
It’s getting worse though. Recently I’ve noticed Reddit links from friends looking like:
reddit.com/r/example/s/1234567Which then redirects to the actual
reddit.com/r/example/post/comments/1938473I believe Spotify and Tiktok do short tracker-filled links like that too. If you’re on android, URLCheck can wrangle those links to find the actual content without the trackers. I’ve set it to intercept all clicked links so I can modify as needed.
On web / iOS, I’m not sure
I haven’t checked how reddit does this but just from the example it seems like there is no anti tracking from the use of urlcheck that you’re describing.
reddit appears to generate tracking link with a specific numeric identifier in their database, so instead of attaching a bunch of removable url parameters they instead do a lookup in their database and then redirect to the original destination.
this also means your app checking the redirect will need to fetch the url to determine the destination, which means their tracking still works just fine.
edit: a word
If the goal is to share clean links, getting the url after the redirect accomplishes it. The tracking that’s done isn’t on your friends/whoever you share the link with, but done on the app. Which does generally defeat the purpose of their tracking.
true, my comment was primarily from the perspective of the recipient of tracking links
No, this applies to these specific parameters. Removing question marks and ampersands from urls will often break the pages if you don’t know what you’re doing or don’t know what the parameters are for.
Though I’ve always wondered if that’s always consistently the case, and when that’s not the case is there any mostly consistent way to identify the separator symbol in the URL text strings :/
Not true on every site. Try it in your browser without the query string first before assuming that’s the case. The app I work on, for instance, uses the query string to set date/time ranges and filter data.
Except when it’s not.
On YouTube, adding “&t=37s” starts the video at 37 seconds. It is pretty useful.
That is the full extent of my coding knowledge.
I don’t know why “amp;” appeared. I didn’t write it and it is not necessary. It’s just the and symbol. Followed by t=__s
I use this installable web app for cleaning extra parameters from links - https://linkcleaner.app/
Adds a share target to Android once you install it as well, makes it easy to send links to. Open source too!
That sounds useful. Although I always fix them, I do get tired of squinting at urls looking for the &.
Anyone have an Android version of this?
I found URLCheck recently. It’s great!
I downloaded it, but how does it work setting it as your default browser? Doesn’t that prevent links from opening in your browser of choice? (in my case, Fennec)
You set URLCheck as your default browser, then you can select an actual default web browser in the app.
Oh, I see. Thanks. I’ll re-install it so I can try it. I panicked when it asked me to set it as my default browser.
Or don’t change your default browser at all and selectively share to URLCheck when you need.
Hmmm. I see a ? In that link … Tracking me much??
Jk thanks though
Downloaded btw thanks again
It’s an installable PWA, click the … Menu in Chrome browser and choose “install”. Hope this helps!
I’ve found the android app URLCheck to be useful for this. You set it as your default Web browser and it lets you check for redirects before you open the link
Yeah, I also recommend URLCheck on Android. You make it your default web browser and you can manually or automatically have the query string removed. It can do other stuff such as resolving redirects before sending it to a web browser.
Or you can use it to clean the URL before sharing it.
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*uBlock Origin
What i do when sharing from an app would be to use a url cleaner app first and then share the cleaned link.
This is the app i use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.svenjacobs.app.leon
Came here for this
I searched up this and am pasting it in again to get rid of the tracking:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/pmmG6z4wqO4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thank you!
Good bot
Just to add, the part of the URL that goes like “/foo/bar/123/article/whatever_blah_blah” is called the “path” and the part that looks like “?foo=bar&t=12345&flavor=chocolate&priceInCents=350&etc=etc” is called the “query string”.
Lemmy does not. So, just dump these other social media scams.
Google search does it too. Hangouts used to. Not sure about Messages and other Google services.
Fuck Google AMP as well.
Even Wikipedia does it. I think it’s to see what platforms people are using it on
Keep in mind, there are many valid reasons for tracking or things that can be utilized to track or fingerprint you. I however feel there’s no transparency, there is often no basis for trust for these websites and I feel they share/sell data with reckless abandon so it is from that angle I approach issues like these from.
Oh for sure, I don’t mind it at all that Wikipedia puts a referrer in the end to indicate what platform the link is shared from. Of course that’s far cry from proper tracking and whatnot.
does anybody bother with blocking javascript anymore, like with noscript.net on firefox?
Im using uBlock (Medium Mode) and JShelter (Strict Mode). It’s an awesome combination, mixed with Firefoxs already existing anti tracking and resist fingerprint setting (default on Librewolf)
NoScript isn’t very popular anymore since it breaks many Webpages. Only exception is Tor, which comes with NoScript by default. Also there’s uBlock, uMatrix, LibreJS and many more to block scripts nowadays
noscript breaks webpages on purpose, because it blocks javascript
Obviously. That’s why not many poeple use it, they just don’t care enough to handle not being able to use those websites/fix them by configuring their NoScript
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Amazon does it as well when you share an article.
The op is about social media sites, but almost every site does it. Amazon, news sites, just about anything Google, Facebook.
Shopping sites all do so they can track you across their platform even if you are not signed in. ‘You looked at (premium) Widget, then (bargain) Widget’. They will probably show (mid-priced) Widget somewhere on that page then. If you click an external link on that page it will have tracking parameters along with it.
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I search up this link that helps spread to word about getting rid of trackers:
Your link has tracking in it tho. You dont need the ?si= part
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/pmmG6z4wqO4?si=64BWjT8Slv5u3f1L
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
