I made a PWA that can quickly remove tracking variables called Link Cleaner. If you install it through Chrome or another Chromium browser on Android, it shows up as a share target, so you can share links to Link Cleaner and then share again to the intended target.
Heads up, I had to remove this extension on my browser because some websites would get stuck in a redirect loop because it’d remove the tracking stuff it’d use in a redirect chain. Took me months to figure out what was causing it
youtube.com/watch?v=FOO&si=BAR would be shortened to just youtu.be/FOO?si=BAR
The link to other people’s account is in the &si=BAR part. Probably standing for “share ID” or “source ID”or something. The shortened link is just the same as the long one with watch?v=FOO being included in the URL instead of the parameters.
Don’t know if any other browsers do it, but Firefox for desktop added an option when right clicking links to copy without URL tracker. I don’t know if it works on yt links, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
If you’re on Android use grayjay, if you’re on Linux use freetube. You can follow channels on both of those.
If using grayjay and you can afford it please do pay for the license; you’re not technically required; it’s based on the honor system, but it helps the developers at FUTO work on it and it helps them donate to other FOSS projects.
If you use freetube please donate to them, even a dollar, the developers will greatly appreciate it.
Exactly. A website has to download ALL the HTML every time. Sure, it can put all that in a JavaScript file and cache it but it has to be built each time. With an app, you (the devs) get to choose what to load, and it’s just usually a few simple things each time instead of constantly running a script.
Using Lemmy as a web app really sucked. Having an actual app with actual integration to a robust UI works.
Plus as an app developer you get to go through the user's contacts and files. Having an actual app locks you and allows you to be the product the app owners sell. Nothing else and certainly nothing of value for 99% of the apps out there.
Huh? I don’t give apps like YouTube access to my files. I don’t upload so they don’t need it. I don’t even think it has asked because I’m not clicking the upload button. YouTube doesn’t get access to my location either. It does have access to local connections because of YouTube on my TV, but that’s it.
Do you know how sandboxed file system storage works? Have you ever made an application? Do you think things that run on the cloud have access to everything else on the cloud? I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
That is 100% wrong. Did you read the tweets or even look at a single YouTube URL?
youtube.com/watch?v=FOO&si=BAR would be shortened to just youtu.be/FOO?si=BAR
The link to other people’s account is in the &si=BAR part. Probably standing for “share ID” or “source ID”or something. The shortened link is just the same as the long one with watch?v=FOO being included in the URL instead of the parameters.
Eventually I think sites will customize every URL for each user.
TikTok is quite sneaky. Sharing from their mobile app, you get: https://www.tiktok.com/t/[9digitCode]/
Only by opening the URL in a browser will you see: https://www.tiktok.com/@[user]/video/[19numerals]?_t=[alphanumericIdentifier]&_r=1…which can be sanitized.
Here’s how they took it a step further too: YCombinator.
Same with Reddit, FB Messenger, Instagram, TikTok… Some of them are harder to spot, like how Reddit now goes reddit.com/r/example/s/8913y4h93
Would be nice if social networks and messengers would automatically strip these parameters.
I started using URLCheck on Android and SO MANY links have some kind of tracker that you can drop and not lose any functionality. Things like Signal (and even Lemmy/Mastodon) could do something similar and throw up a little warning when it encounters a known tracker, then offer to clean the URL for you.
Another advantage is that the clean URLs are a lot more descriptive
I’m using FairEmail on Android. When tapping a link, thr app detects tracking parameters and offers to remove them. I really like that feature and wish other apps would offer something similar.
That was the first place I noticed it, thought it was really smart of them, someone would send me a meme or whatever and it would show their account at the top. Was impressed that they generate so many links, now they can see who knows who so easily
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