Latest versions of Firefox offer to copy and paste URL without trackers. I am not sure how it compares to specialized tools.

There is a Firefox addon called ClearURLs that automatically removes all of the tracking crap. It works on PC and Android.

Generally anything that comes after a questionmark in a URL can be safely stripped out, though not always. The random string of characters you get after a youtu.be link is tracking, the ?t=123 is a timestamp.

I also strip off “m.” leading URLs...

Bless you kind netizen

URLCheck may be the app you're thinking of.

Edit: the way it works, is that you set it up as your default browser. Then, whenever you hit a link, it will open up URLCheck first, and you'll get to decide what to do with the link, strip away query parameters, and which app to open the link with.

Yeah I have a habit of doing this and then testing the link to find the smallest possible version. Mostly because I find it annoying when I want to text a link to someone and it takes up an entire page of the chat.

Leon is great. I try to remember to use it anytime I share a link. As a result, I have found that that some links are just the base url plus a UUID (e.g. mycoolshoppingsite.com/GAJEBKT), so you can't strip out the tracking without breaking the link entirely.

I think you can go find the video in an incognito tab, then grab the link from there

Mind that just removing everything after the question mark can break the link, because these parameters can also do useful things.
For example, if you use the search functionality on a webpage, you'll typically be redirected onto a URL with a parameter containing your search query.

And Firefox also has this tracking parameter removal built-in these days. In the right-click menu, you can select "Copy Link Without Site Tracking".
I cannot say, though, if this works better than CleanURLs. Because these parameters can do useful things, it's tricky to automatically remove them without breaking links.

There's gotta be an extension that does do a good job, right?

I'm so sorry you have to deal with this. And so terrified that anonymity is wiped out that easily

I don't remember which site this was, but I remember it being a pretty big one...

Anyway - I shared a link on reddit about 10 years ago, and I got a PM from a user addressing me by my first name telling me to delete the link.

Not only did it say who I was - the link logged people into my account.

Wait, you conduct yourself in a manner consistent with a reputation you'd like to maintain? Even when you don't think anyone will find out who you are?

What kind of responsible shit is that? Don't you know you're on the Internet?

The fingerprinting goes waaaaay beyond Instagram. Maybe not frequently username specific, but it's still kinda weird to always be throwing out your device type, browser, and prior we page among other things

You can go into settings and change it so that it doesn't show to anyone. But at some point they made an update and it reset those options to the default setting even if you had previously set it to hidden.

At that point I just went in and changed my name on my account settings.

Its more effort but I do this if I think its worth sharing a link, test the link in a private browser first. I just also don't want to be doxxing friends and family to the platform in question either.

Let's just share content and not track people and accounts