Mastodawn

PSA: If you share a YouTube video using the native share feature it now attaches your user ID (?si=xxxxxx) to the URL automatically.

YT likely does this to growth-hack DMs. When someone clicks on the link, YT can start a DM thread between you two automatically with this ID even if they found the link outside of the YT app.

If you post links publicly, I strongly recommend deleting the ID unless you want to post your user profile.

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Thibaultmol 🌈1d ago

@Techaltar tbf, this isn't new, si has been in the URL for probably a decade now. And they've definitely been using this data before. It's only now that it's in a user visible ui item.
Edit: see my later reply, turns out that it has been a thing for a while not a decade

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TechAltar 1d ago

@thibaultmol It has? I haven't seen it in my shared links until about 2 weeks ago which coincides with their DM push. Maybe they are experimenting with different users differently?

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Thibaultmol 🌈

@Techaltar Just checked, I found a link of mine that has &si= at the end that I shared back in 2023.
Before that they did have &feature=share just to indicate that it was from someone who clicked the share button on a video.
So yeah, not new but also not as old as I thought it was