You REALLY should remove the tracking codes from Youtube links now.

[aesthr@wandering.shop]

You REALLY should remove the tracking codes from Youtube links now.

They started showing a popup about who sent the link and offering a (maybe new) DM feature, potentially revealing your personal account name to anyone who opens the link.

[aesthr@wandering.shop]

you can anonymize the link by removing the part of the link after the “?”

(at least for youtube currently, this can be different on other platforms and may also change in the future)

[aesthr@wandering.shop]

if you’re on an Apple device, you can use this shortcut that does it automatically for most popular platforms:

Shortcuts

(www.icloud.com)

i’m sure a similar thing exists on android but I don’t have a non-ancient android device.

[nicole@queer.group]

@aesthr on firefox there is an addon that can keep track of doing that for you: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/clearurls/

[joknopp@chaos.social]

@aesthr On android I can recommend url-checker to preview the url and control the parameters when opening an link on the client side. You can set it as your standard browser, then it will always display the url to open and has options to remove unwanted tracking parameters.

It is an extra step to open a link, so it can be inconvenient. But it can also save you from visiting sites you dislike before firing them up in a browser.

URLCheck | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Allows analyzing (or sharing) URLs before opening them.

(f-droid.org)

URLCheck - Apps on Google Play

Allows analyzing (or sharing) URLs before opening them.

(play.google.com)

[efi@chitter.xyz]

@aesthr the fuk

[wariat@mastodon.social]

@aesthr
AdBlock can strip those things so if you open, a video let say https://youtu.be/CPv4Wkc0Pm8?si=WTFstring what you will find in url bar is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPv4Wkc0Pm8 ready to send to ppl.

It's easy way, at least on computer.

[pprem@tech.lgbt]

@aesthr

Confidentiality, privacy, and respect for their visitors—it’s really something they just don’t get; it’s crazy.

[eggg@hachyderm.io]

@aesthr
I'm foreseeing soon that the share button will no longer include the video URL but is a bespoke share link which is harder/not possible to reverse engineer / strip out the share metadata.

Like, eventually we may have to tell people "search for these terms" if we want to share things untracked

[batterpunts@mastodon.social]

@aesthr Firefox has a Copy Clean Link option in its link context menu, which strips the "pp=" part of a youtube tracking url.
Unknown if it also strips "is="

[sanityinc@hachyderm.io]

@eggg @aesthr that's already the case if you use "share" from within the YouTube app or web interface itself: youtub dot be domain links with an opaque unique identifier.

[georgebaily@mastodon.social]

@aesthr eventually they want to kill the open URL completely

[annika@xoxo.zone]

@aesthr Agree that you should remove them before sharing!

uBlock Origin's "AdGuard/uBO – URL Tracking Protection" filter will remove them from links you click, if you want to save a step cleaning any links you _receive_. (Only works if you don't have the YT app, of course.)

[rania@freesewing.social]

@aesthr
I’m Rania from Gaza
We lost our home, and now my children and I are living in a fragile tent with no protection from the cold, heat, or insects.
My children suffer every day, and I am unable to provide their basic needs
Please don’t leave us alone. Any donation or share could help us survive 🤍
Help & donation link in bio.

[barryallen2023@mastodon.social]

@joknopp @aesthr This is the one I use and it's very good. The only hiccup is Facebook share links.

[risc@wetdry.world]

@sanityinc uh, no? the "share" feature in the web interface gives a https://youtu.be/<video ID>?si=<junk> link, at least in my case (not logged in).

@eggg @aesthr

[pa3weg@mastodon.social]

@aesthr Interesting how incredibly slow they are rolling this out. They've been doing this for months but I see these screenshots in peoples feeds every week showing it as new behaviour.

Either that or most people on here actually never get sent tracked links in the first place!

[slangc5326@mastodon.social]

@barryallen2023 @joknopp @aesthr FB share embeds their "who sent it" ID into the codes with no easy "?..."

I paste my share link into a non-logged-in mobile browser, get rid of the "[Name] sent you this blah blah" pop over, and THEN you can copy the plain URL.

I don't share FB content much. It adds 2 steps but I don't really want them to know I shared with X and Y IRL friends.

I see more platforms adopting this more invasive method in the surveillance-heavy future.

[larymir@chaos.social]

@aesthr there is a setting to keep YouTube from sharing your account with the person you're sending the link. This does not remove the tracking parameter, but should keep you from accidentally leaking your account, in case you forget to remove the tracking
In the YouTube app on Android: If you click on the share button you should see a popup with something like "sending as [your channel]", clicking on your channel should lead you to an explanation with a link to the setting to deactivate it

[glennseto@mastodon.social]

@aesthr Thanks for the heads-up! I've already been doing it as a matter of common courtesy, but this makes it even more pressing.

(Also, when sharing from the YT Music app, removing the "music." subdomain part from the URL makes the link more convenient to people who don't use the service and maybe have adblocking set up on regular YT.)