It is my practice to delete the hash lines after question marks in URLS to defeat tracking... but the question mark has disappeared

[kissaki@programming.dev]

Don't use the share with shortened url. Copy the page url instead.

Otherwise (you'll have to) accept that you don't know what's included in the shortened link.

[azzu@lemm.ee]

It's not about defeating tracking of yourself, but who you share the link to, your relationship with them.

Without that tracking parameter, if the URL is common among many people (which it usually is, since usually one thing has one URL for everyone), then it's impossible to know who shared to who.

If you have the tracking parameter, then the service can know that you shared the URL, as well as who you shared it to, being able to put that information together and thus built more of a profile on your social connections.

[tyler@programming.dev]

also, don't use Notes to try to remove the query parameters. apple is fucking idiotic and made it almost impossible to actually delete the query parameters. I literally tried for like 15 minutes the other day and it was incredible how it would completely ignore me deleting the query parameters and just resave exactly what I had originally input (even if I long pressed and chose edit). It's just easier to repaste it back into safari or whatever and delete it there.

[waz@lemmy.world]

Yep, I love it. I told my wife about it and she thinks I'm crazy.

[jackbydev@programming.dev]

With TikTok, if you copy and paste the URL into a browser you will get a link you can then copy and paste without the tracking. You can probably do the same with Instagram, but I just got a link from them and they had the tracking under a query parameter (that's the technical term for the stuff after the question mark). So I'm not sure what you're seeing.

Also, thank you for stripping tracking data off of links you share. "It ain't much, but it's honest work!"

[jackbydev@programming.dev]

Just because something isnt perfect doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Would you rather OP share links with tracking?

[pleasehavemylyrics@lemmy.world]

Okay… can you help me delete the tracking in this link?

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=W_svsNc6seE&si=22MYOxMc5wMcdatU

Is the tracking piece after the second equals?

[jackbydev@programming.dev]

Query parameters follow everything after the ? and take the format a=foo&b=bar. Essentially, key value pairs using = and separated by &.

There's no perfect way to know what is and isn't part of a tracking stuff. We just use our intuition. In this case, when we look at a YouTube video we see links like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ. Notice the v=xxx? So, in the URL you shared, we can deduce that v=W_svsNc6seE is needed and the si=xxx is the tracking stuff. You should also then remove the & because it's no longer separating two entries. Leaving it doesn't seem to hurt anything though. So https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=W_svsNc6seE without &si=22MYOxMc5wMcdatU.

I don't know what si stands for, but in my head I see it as "share ID". A lot of services use si or something similar for the tracking stuff.

[pleasehavemylyrics@lemmy.world]

Thanks very much.

I shall experiment with your models and hopefully learn a little bit more about this.

Would you say that these platforms are trying to make it harder for dabblers like me to defeat some of their tracking?

[jackbydev@programming.dev]

Yeah. TikTok's generated share links don't have separate params for the content and tracking making it difficult to get around without copying the link into the browser yourself. Because it's mostly used through an app and not the browser, you cannot just copy the URL and you have to use the share button.