So annoying to always have to find out how far you can trim a URL before it breaks.
Typically anything after the "?". That's where the parameters live. There are always exceptions.
There are many URLs that require parameters to load a resource (and aren’t necessarily tracking anything). With YouTube’s non-shortened links (for example), the video ID is after the ?, but is usually (but not always) immediately after.
This:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Can be shortened to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
But no shorter.
(actually, you can remove the www. but that’s not relevant for illustrating my point)
LOL: thank you Voyager or Lemmy.world for stripping it even from my inline code.
Here’s what I was trying to post:
I mean that's part of the fun of surfing the web, you get to play a fun puzzle game of "How to Lobotomize a URL"
I usually just do it because shorter links look better than 30 lines of crap
Right? The fact that this is an extra bit of tracking information I don't want makes this an easy sell for anyone looking for a reason to do this, but for me it's because it just makes links uglier.
Everything after the ? can be safely removed
This is usually true but but not always. There's often times when a URL query like that is used to choose the page to load. I believe wordpress does this
Only on "I have really bad SEO" kinds of blogs. Query strings have been considered a negative thing for many many years.
whuh? querystrings are integral to things like pagination. they are by no means a negative thing.
Not everybody cares for SEO BS
If you're still using firefox, right click -> copy clean link. works most of the time.
edit: on desktop, idk if mobile supports it or not. Good suggestions below though for mobile.
This is kinda true but also kinda fear mongering. UTM parameters are just to track where you clicked the link from. They're usually not dynamic, and don't contain anything about you personally. The example in the screenshot utm_source=newsletter is probably added to all links in a company's newsletter email, so they can tell that people get to the page via the newsletter.
There is also copy clean link option in firefox and brave
I use an app called "Leon URL Cleaner" from F-Droid. Does a really good job removing tracking params, and only adds one extra step to sharing a URL.
They are called query parameters and they are used for other things as well. So you can remove the ones you see similar to these but sometimes there might be important stuff you need to get the page to load in those parameters.
After removing them (or even if there was nothing to remove) I test out links I'm sending in a private browser window to check that they would work for other people.
Not everything after the ? can be removed. Obvious and well known example, YouTube videos use the video as part of the query parameters (on non shortened URLs). https://youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
One small error on an otherwise very useful post! 💜
Fun fact, YouTube has backwards comparability for its video links, so https://youtube.com/w/dQw4w9WgXcQ will go to the same video (granted, it will change format to the up to date one, but it is one way to go to a yt video without URL arguments)
I've been using URL Check on Android to clean links of crap like this.
"everything after the ? Symbol can be removed without issue" is a bold statement to make. Reminds me when the TV news had a specialist telling people to look at urls before clicking and check if it ends with ".php" as that would mean it is a virus.
Difference being that the ? in URLs separates the resource from additional information
So unless some website decides to identify the resource in those query field (for example search results pages in a web search), you are generally safe
In any case, messaging apps will try to navigate to the site to create a caption for your message, and that can be a way to check if it works or not
There are URL shortener Apps on F-Droid. Simple share the link to this app and get a short link without this privacy mess.
Most of my internetin' is done on mobile, because I'm very rarely at my desk, and when I am, I'm normally working on school. Are there any solutions to handling this easily on mobile without having to manually erase part of the pasted link when I go to send it to someone? A few people have mentioned that's it's not 100% guaranteed that the anything after ? Is worthless, so I don't know how to ensure I'm not breaking a link
Add this URL Shortener filterlist to uBlock Origin.
This removes the fast majority of these query parameters.
I honestly couldn't determine if it was a typo or not, but it's not "fast" but "vast majority."
my brain autocorrected it to "vast," but I like "fast majority" as a phrase
I did not know what those were for before seeing this but I remeber seeing "source=chat_gpt" next to a link to a source in a news article and thought that it was odd.
I usually change the parameters to things like utm_source=yourmom, just for kicks.
Why is this a shitpost? It's absolutely correct and factual.
Must be the giant red circles and mixed fonts
It is correct and factual. Unfortunately it doesn't really explain anything. There's plenty of situations where you wouldn't want to delete content because they are necessary for functionality.
This belongs more on Technology and Privacy communities.
For Android users at least, I recommend the Léon URL Cleaner app, when you share a link from many common sources to the URL Cleaner, it removes all that tracking shit for you, and copies the cleaned link to the clipboard.
Time to put new privacy laws in place or force politicans to do it
It’s not always nefarious.
I work for a non-profit. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand the click rate on a mass message.
We don’t provide data to third parties and use a self-hosted oss analytics platform.
So I think folks should understand tracking and manage it but it’s not all bad. Just almost always bad. Really bad.
Worse: a lot of links can’t be fixed or modified since they use click-through services to obscure the destination.
Legitimate concern, called URL tracking. There's browser extensions for that.
This tip really doesn't let me down, turns around and desert me
hey you, yeah you, you're finally awake
Add made up data to those parameters. Like source=ericsschmidtspedoisland
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