Why YSK: Trackers don’t do good for anyone except the platform, and they’re not necessary to view the content in the URL.
It’s courteous to not subject the recipient (most likely your friends and family) to this tracking. You’re already sending them to the platform, which is tracking them in other ways. But you can help reduce that tracking by removing everything after the ampersand in the URL. Here are some examples.
Twitter example
URL: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20
The s=20 is a Twitter-specific parameter to show that the tweet was copied from the web app. s=46 is iOS, and I can’t remember what Android’s code is. This is a relatively clean link, but there are some links that’ll concatenate unique identifiers, like: https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937?s=20&t=Fn47fnSDJUD74bd9.
In this case, you’ll notice there’s also a &t= parameter, which is a unique identifier to the person who shared it.
The only part of the URL you need is https://x.com/CookieSlayers/status/1623712884902567937.
Instagram example:
URL: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB/?igshid=MzRlODCFWFlZA==
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzP877du2EB.
TikTok example
You’ll notice TikTok’s is a lot more readable in terms of what the URL contains.
The is_from_webapp parameter is self-explanatory, as is the sender_device, and then there’s the identifier that’s unique to you. In this case, 7302915057791436331.
The only part of the URL you need is https://www.tiktok.com/@inthepaintcrew/video/7301348328602717482.
The best route1 would be to use privacy-respecting frontends, but if you don’t, simply deleting everything after the ampersand goes a long way.
1The best route would actually be to not use/reward platforms that are literally destroying humanity, but we’re not there yet, so… in the meantime, let’s just try to decrease the tracking and stop subjecting our friends and family to it as much as possible.
Not familiar with ScriptSafe—wonder if anyone here can confirm it’s necessary if you’re already using uBlock Origin. I would err on the side of “no,” but you never know.
They do different things. Ad blockers help to manage things that are being displayed, but there are still off-domain scripts that are run that you don’t know what is buried in them. Plugins on website builder services, 3rd party data harvesters, god only knows what else. I use uBlock Origin in conjunction. Google Tag Manager is not blocked by uBlock. There are sites I’ve been to that had like 30 off-domain scripts trying to load shit even with uBlock active.