JavaPeg
Ben CohenJust right-clicked a link in a mastodon post and copied it then sent it to someone and only then did it finally occur to me that it was completely a unfucked-with link. Not some BS redirect link that tracks where it came from and who I sent it to. Just a regular link.
I'm sorry I know "wow mastodon :hearteyes:" posts are cringe and yes, yes they are, except for mine, those are gold obvs
Iván Cavero Belaunde@airspeedswift Wow Mastodon 😬
Shantini@airspeedswift this is the way
Thomas Frans 🇺🇦@airspeedswift They aren't stupid posts. It's good to appreciate the good practices and the work of people who actually want to make social media a safer, more open place.
Sören@airspeedswift @donmelton but now how do they know how ENGAGED you were??
Vint ProxThat's the problem, isn't it? 🤔 In 5 years, we'll be wondering how to attach this info back if people get sick of not knowing what places they share at are most engageable. It's like this obsession with seeing who's read your message in chat to not repeatedly beg for active feedback of people.
But wherever you go, there are just bunch of passive observers sitting around that you cannot change. It requires workarounds, and unfortunately just appending things to URLs isn't going to help it.
Kitsy
Bojun (He/Him)@airspeedswift yup, welcome to the fedivers where you are treated like a person and not like an ad watching machine or a row in DB for ad tracking :)
Paul@airspeedswift I also like the option of having a setting in my app to open all external links straight into my browser, not the in-app browser.
Ravy 🍓@airspeedswift i have this exact experience all the time!! out of courtesy i always trim the tracking garbage from links when sending them to friends — not having to do that is a very pleasant surprise
Levi@airspeedswift May be noteworthy as well that there's a browser extension which removes tracking tokens from URLs as you browse!
GitHub - ClearURLs/Addon: ClearURLs is an add-on based on the new WebExtensions technology and will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy.
ClearURLs is an add-on based on the new WebExtensions technology and will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy. - ClearURLs/Addon
JohnVoltz@levi @airspeedswift
Not a programmer, but is there an extension that will replace the content after the = in the tracking code with ‘NeverGonnaGiveYouUp’ then ‘NeverGonnaLetYouDown’ and so on?
Why give nothing when you can give junk 😉
Khaled@levi thanks. 🥰
Edmund EdgarTired: The fediverse
Wired: The un-fucked-with-ternet
Mynacol@airspeedswift For your web browser usage there are some filter lists to remove those parameters if possible. See the recommended uBlock Origin filter lists at https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-recommended
You are using uBlock already, aren't you?
(Alternatively, there is ClearURLs if you don't want an ad blocker)
Phil Allsopp@airspeedswift And…I love the stone structure & the tell-tale thatch
Mega “Byte” Matt 
@airspeedswift shor.tr/1245434?utm=4378gh8hbyclickingthislinkyouagreetosacrificeyourfirstborn783hgreuh780h80&source=yourexactlocationandsocialsecurityno
Travis Newton 👨💻@airspeedswift It’s like the internet pre-2010 and it’s glorious!
Will Ranjan-Churchill@airspeedswift I had a similar thought recently. After spending some time scrolling through Mastodon posts, it took me completely by surprise when I hopped over to another platform and every third post was promoted/paid for. I'd seen it for years, but only then did it really occur to me what a weird concept that was.
David Birney@airspeedswift I try to always remove that extra crap anytime I share a link. Do it's nice to not have anything to remove.
Church of Jeff@airspeedswift — I strip off all the tracking bits off of the URL before I post any links from other social media. That helps too.
Karel P Kerezman@airspeedswift No t.co nonsense or anything. It's so refreshing!
Matthew Bloch@airspeedswift if you miss the shadiness you could run it through https://verylegit.link/
Ingmar@airspeedswift while this is a nice aspect, I sometimes miss that links to Mastodon posts are not as easy to identify if the link goes to an instance like breakpoint.cafe or xoxo.zone.
Thought about building a link shortener with a more obvious domain because of this.
Thought about building a link shortener with a more obvious domain because of this.