I thought this was common knowledge but everyone was surprised. All you need to share a YouTube link is the white part. Everything else is tracking.
Some browsers/extensions also provide a clean URL that strips it.
I thought this was common knowledge but everyone was surprised. All you need to share a YouTube link is the white part. Everything else is tracking.
Some browsers/extensions also provide a clean URL that strips it.
But what kind of tracking? And is it really worth how much time it takes to clean the links manually?
The tracking is used to identify the source user who shared the link - that is connected in the DB to the user who received and used the link. That connects their two digital footprints as far as the website is concerned. It’s one element that leads to strangely tenuous “people you may know” style lists. If you and the person you share with have totally separate online lives. The moment you share that link - everything YouTube (Google) knows about both of you is connected. If one of you has shared your contact lists, your phone number, address etc is potentially now connected to you even if you’ve never posted it to anything online. It doesn’t take much for someone to be linked to 1000’s of people in a chain reaction of connections started by a single shared link that hasn’t been anonymised.
Apart from everything mentioned below, you post a single one of those here, and Google & friends instantly know basically everything about user ジン@quokk.au’s entire online life. Hope you’ve never upvoted a post critical of the regime if you don’t want get debanked in your own country by some AI algorithm without a trial.
it’s like literally half a second
There are tools for that.
This is Leon the cleaner.
https://apt.izzysoft.de/packages/com.svenjacobs.app.leon
Anyone know of any tools in the Apple ecosystem or URL based tools?
For iOS/iPadOS I use this one, works well for me:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/trackless-links-url-pip/id6749830894
https://linkcleaner.app/ is a browser based one I use
How is opening an app or website easier than copying part of a link or deleting it after you paste it?
It helps them map who shares to who
If you are on Android, this app helps both ways - it can protect you when opening a link and when sharing a link. Available on Play Store and F-Droid.
Yeah. I’ve set it to be my default browser. Awesome indeed.
https://linksanitizer.com/learn/what-is-the-si-parameter/
According to this, it’s a share identifier. It marks what source shared it and who used that share to view the video.