 Pro tip: clean YouTube links. When you get a link from YT, it includes an ID to track YOU. It is a "query string" on the end of the URL like this: ...?si=[tracker_ID_here] This ID allows YouTube (and their owner, Google, and *their* owner, Alphabet, and ALL of their associates) to track the people who click on the link, and the apps they used, back to you, building a network of none-of-their-business. Good news: DELETE the "?si=..." part and the link works just fine without the tracking. 96 comments
@jstatepost @VisualStuart Firefox offers the option of "copy link without site tracking" when right-clicking to copy a link. It's grayed out when the link is tracker-free. I haven't looked, but there are probably add-ons which do this automatically for some browsers. @Spud_Coolzip @jstatepost @VisualStuart Kinda surprised copying without tracker parameters isn't just the default  @amin @Spud_Coolzip @jstatepost @VisualStuart @Spud_Coolzip @jstatepost @VisualStuart Yes there are. ClearURLs is a good one. Supports both Firefox and Chrome https://gitlab.com/ClearURLs/ClearUrls @jstatepost @VisualStuart If I may, I'd like to recommend the FreeTube app for desktop. It's cross platform, no tracking, and no ads. It gets ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ from me. @VisualStuart also, shout out to https://www.youtube-nocookie.com run by Google themselves. Has no front page, but can view videos without cookies. Edit: https://todon.nl/@fedor/113666723157998939 ... run by google themselves... https://dustinwhisman.com/writing/youtube-nocookie-com-will-still-track-user-data/ @fedor @VisualStuart I thought it was unusually good willed of them- thanks for the link.  @VisualStuart I use Waterfox as my browser, and when I right-click a link the menu that pops up has the "Copy Link Without Site Tracking" option which does that automatically. Very convenient for someone like myself that copies links to here and/or Discord a lot. @VisualStuart Not just YouTube! That ? in a URL almost universally means “the rest of this is not essential”. You may need it for, say, keeping your browser aware that your shopping cart has 4 items in it, or for TicketBastard to know you are 8,762nd in the queue, but if you are sending a link to a friend as a gift idea in the middle of browsing? They don’t need any of that stuff. The ? signals the start of the spyware, on YT, Amazon, EBay, most e-commerce sites, you name it. @dwenius This is perhaps a *little* overstated. I'm a retired software architect here, so believe me there are many good and unharmful uses for query strings, so let's not go overboard. But you're quite right that in many cases they are not absolutely necessary for a given site or page. To test what is needed and what is not, I will often paste a URL into the Address bar of the browser, try removing a chunk of a suspicious query string, hit Enter and see if it takes me where I want to be. @VisualStuart @dwenius A significant number of such strings involve the source of the link, though, and if I clicked on a link from my private e-mail I'd want to take out everything after and including the ?.  @VisualStuart @Benhm3 Well, you could Google it. That and the following caveat: "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet." Use Kagi, not that other one. $5-10 per month. Worth every penny. And they show the same thing you've said.  @VisualStuart Or you can put random garbage in the tracker_ID just to mess with them. @VisualStuart @gdinwiddie @gdinwiddie @crypticcelery @VisualStuart  @VisualStuart there has got to be a more seamless way of doing this without manually deleting it in the browser?  ClearURLs extension for Firefox and Chrome. Update: "Copy Clean Link Location" from the context menu does no longer work. Clicking thru does. And while we're talking link cleanup, I find Don't Track Me Google useful too.  @VisualStuart I found it’s always a good practice to delete everything after the ? in a link…. especially those that I might share with others.  @rickf @VisualStuart Doesn’t work with standard YouTube links though, since the video ID is after the ?, and you have to know enough about how links are constructed to know how to keep only the “v” part. Ahh yeah…. I forgot. Sorry I’ve been pruning those links for so long. It’s automatic that I know where to look. Btw at least on Firefox there are (or still should be) some extensions that will do the link pruning for you which is helpful when sharing them. This is also true of Facebook links. There's a short string that's important, but everything after the ? is unnecessary and presumably tracking.   @VisualStuart better - change the SI to some other randomly harvested from the internet! 😂  @VisualStuart And it's really easy. You copy and paste the link, so you'll see that ?. Just delete the question mark and everything after. Here's another branch on this thread where I provide an example with and without the query string. @VisualStuart I generally don't follow YT links back to YT at all, by means of Privacy Frontends (Invidious etc) which are automatically intercepted/redirected from Snoopy's path in my browser, by means of the Libredirect extension that similarly stands in for privacy friendly Search (to SearxNG etc. instead of Goo or DDG), and other go-to service sites. @nek @VisualStuart the problem is i joined the war on invidious on the side of invidious but i'm losing @VisualStuart The LibRedirect browser extension that I mentioned gives its users several choices of Privacy Frontends to use with YouTube: Invidious, Materialous, Piped (very popular), Piped-Material, PokeTube, CloudTube, LightTube, Tubo, FreeTube, Yattee, FreeTube PWA, ViewTube, and ytify. There are some handy indices of Frontends for YT and other web services, for example: https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/lists/jamesponddotco%2Fawesome-privacy-front-ends @VisualStuart @BernieDoesIt do those shorter “sharable links” created when I click “share” embed my tracking code but with fewer letters?  @the_turtle Let me clarify: this is using the Share (curved arrow) icon on the video page in the website or app, not copying the URL from your browser's Address bar. The latter is longer and can contain other additional information.  @natureshelperokanaganhighlands Yes, and (if you are logged into YouTube on the website or using a mobile app) it will include the query string. It will work, and it will include tracking when people click on it. @VisualStuart there is a short string, but you say it is actually that custom link that leads to my id, then? @natureshelperokanaganhighlands Look for the Share button near the bottom of this screenshot.  I think the "si" is for "share intent" but thinking of it as "spyware identifier" may be more apt. @VisualStuart pretty good addon that removes tracking information from a lot of sites: https://gitlab.com/ClearURLs/ClearUrls @VisualStuart@pdx.social IIRC Firefox has a "Copy Site Without Trackers" function, or maybe it's one of my handful of privacy plugins idk.  @VisualStuart @dgar I have tried and tried to no avail to get my sister to cut the tracking stuff out of links but she always just lazily dumps entire walls of tracking links into chat and it is so annoying. :neocat_scream_angry: @VisualStuart @VisualStuart There are a couple of add-ons for Firefox, called Chameleon and ClearURLs. The former spoofs your browser profile, the latter automatically strips links of tracking data. Some might also appreciate the impish fuckery of Privacy Possum, which "monkey wrenches" (to use the developers' term!) commercial tracking methods by falsifying the data. @VisualStuart Invidilink sometimes also works to convert a YT link to an Invidious link, although YT has been furiously blocking Invidious instances lately. https://invidi.link   @VisualStuart Even better: Don't use Youtube at all. #deleteGoogle @VisualStuart I remove the tracker for any url I use. Would love some automatic app/program that did it for me. @VisualStuart And there seem to be plenty, one which I use as of 5 minutes ago: https://github.com/svenjacobs/leon @VisualStuart @VisualStuart ReVanced is a really good modded YouTube app that does that for you among other things (including, speaking of links, a time-stamped links sharing button)  @VisualStuart there used to be a no tracking variation of the URL but I couldn't find that. @VisualStuart @VisualStuart also, as I discovered earlier, mastodon automatically strips the trackers, which also means it strips keys. 🤭  @VisualStuart btw, sometimes it's si, sometimes it's pp
The only two tags you shouod ever leave are watch= and list=, anything else just assume is some tracking bs  @VisualStuart In fact, delete everything that comes after /watch?v=[string of letters, numbers & maybe dashes] How do you know when that string ends? Because it's ONLY letters, numbers & dashes; you start deleting as soon as you hit a question mark, ampersand or other special character. The only time to not delete everything is if you've chosen to share including a time code. In that case you can remove ?feature=shared from the URL, that's also a data point (though not an identifier) 😊  Indeed, I have been doing that the first time I ever noticed the tracking kept onto the URL the best way to pose a YouTube URL is to go to the search bar and pull out the URL for the video.  << "si" typically refers to a parameter used in the URL for tracking purposes. YouTube URLs can contain various parameters that help track user interactions, such as views, shares, and other engagement metrics. For example, a link might look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&si=some_value In this case... 1/2 "si" could be used to identify a specific source or campaign that led to the video being viewed. The value associated with "si" can help content creators and marketers analyze the effectiveness of their promotional efforts. >> 2/2 @VisualStuart all this still doesn't include all the other trackers and queries not encompassed just by the 'si' acronym, nor speaks about shortened links: which are naught but nice looking boxes full of shit  @VisualStuart Also, I’ve found if you change the watch?v= to embed/ you can watch YouTube videos in full screen without ads, however not all videos will have embeds enabled. @VisualStuart this applies to Amazon listings and pretty much any other big tech links too  @VisualStuart @torparskytt ClearURLs for Firefox: "This extension will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browsing through the Internet." https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ -- if you want to verify that it's working, you can enable logging in the extension.   @VisualStuart @D_J_Nathanson should do this for URLs generally. 99.9% of the time anything after a ‘?’ is unneeded when sharing a URL, and is just tracking and useless clutter. @VisualStuart Firefox has an option now to copy a link without site tracking, that cuts all that stuff out, and I always use it  @VisualStuart@pdx.social  |
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🥥 And after you delete the spy part of the YouTube link, watch YouTube videos in the DuckDuckGo app or browser to eliminate ads and tracking during playback. 🥥
#YouTube #Enshittification #RotEconomy #LuigiMangione #DuckDuckGo #TormentMachine #TuckersBalls