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Ever since the first time I spotted this I've been removing it manually. Any browser addons to help with this, anyone? The fact that Google has to resort to th

Ever since the first time I spotted this I've been removing it manually. Any browser addons to help with this, anyone? The fact that Google has to resort to this is amusing. To me it means they can't do it any other way and are now leaving themselves wide open for us the techies to strip that tracking ID; which we absolutely will do. Things must be getting desperate somewhere in HQ. Good.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago
They can obviously generate indistinguishably unique urls for video sharing links if they wanted, this is just easier to implement (though not by much). Also there’s no treachery afoot here… go ahead and remove it, the stakes here are very low.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Well exactly, they are outright adding an URL parameter and of course I'll remove it. Doesn't mean that they don't rely on less tech-inclined people to never even notice, and I am sure that's a core part of their strategy anyway. As for the indistinguishable URLs, you have a solid point there but I'd think there would be a lot of outrage because people want those URLs to generate previews when pasted in pages, social media comments etc. Not to mention all the false positives generated by people embedding such URLs. So I think for now we're safe on that front, they would poison their own well if they went ahead with encoded URL identifiers, happily. But again, I am very amused that they just outright added "?si=..." -- to me that reeks of desperation and I have to admit that I enjoy it when Google is struggling.
  - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
    If this "reeks to you of desperation", then you're putting a lot more emotional energy into the situation than is necessary. There is no world in which this is desperation on the part of YouTube, that's not a reasonable view.
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
Better to keep the ID and change it to 31337.
NamTaf 3y ago
ClearURLs is the one I use: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/
woodruffw 3y ago
> The fact that Google has to resort to this is amusing. To me it means they can't do it any other way and are now leaving themselves wide open for us the techies to strip that tracking ID; which we absolutely will do. I don't think it means that (although I wish it did): it's just another connecting datapoint, and more connecting datapoints are always good from their perspective. (I think it's helpful to think about these things from Google's perspective: they're running a service that ~billions of people access and share daily. 95% or more of those people won't know how to strip those identifiers; the 5% or so that do are put on the slightly-less-happy-path for social graph discovery.)
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Oh I am sure it will have positive impact on their tracking; that much is guaranteed. What I am saying is that they chose a very lame way to do it and this robs them of very valuable data they could get from those 5% and I'd argue that they really would want to know how you and me are moving and discovering stuff when we're outside YouTube. Trying hard not to have the protagonist syndrome here but I'd think they are more interested in how the non-couch-surfers do stuff. Though a very good counter-argument would be that they can now target ads better and probably gain slightly higher conversation regardless of us the 5% stripping the tracking parameter, and that would still be a huge financial win for them. All in all, my stance is: let them have it, but I still find it reassuring that they are not even covert about it which gives us a lot of options on how to deny them. Finally, there's the possibility of various browsers and addons to start automatically removing the tracking parameter, though such movements usually take years.
  - eichin 3y ago
    The same group of people that are doing the best job of avoiding their advertising? I would expect them to prefer that we went away quietly :-)
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      Yeah but we will not go away. Let them keep trying, they will have to start banning IPs and they will be taken them to court because I pay for Premium and I can share links to their videos however I wish.
schiffern 3y ago
ClearURLs is a great "set it and forget it" addon. Don't leave home without it. If you want power and customizability, check out Request Control. uBlock Origin can also block this by adding the following rules (Dashboard > My Filters tab): ! tracking param https://twitter.com/OldRowSwig/status/1732112446943269347 ||youtube.com^$removeparam=si ||youtu.be^$removeparam=si
- dhx 3y ago
  ClearURLs implemented the rule to remove the si attribute on November 5th[1]. I think a better approach though is to whitelist allowed attributes rather than blacklist disallowed attributes. For example, if you get a URL starting "https://www.youtube.com/watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?" then the only allowed attributes are v, t, etc and everything else would be stripped. [1] https://github.com/ClearURLs/Rules/commit/f4d52da5902640d4d00613424b7428912e9eafff https://github.com/ClearURLs/Rules/commit/f4d52da5902640d4d0...
  - schiffern 3y ago
    Request Control[0] can do this. Create a rule with the following settings: Host: *.youtube.com Path: /watch* Types: Document Action: Filter Check "Filter URL Redirection" List of Trimmed Query Parameters: v t list index time_continue Check "Invert trimming" 'time_continue' is used when you navigate to Youtube from an embedded video. 'index' is used in playlists. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontro...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - MiguelX413 3y ago
    lc should be allowed in addition to v and t, as link to specific comments under a video!
judge2020 3y ago
> they can't do it any other way This is purely an extra data point; without it, there is 0 attribution for which user is responsible for a link to a video causing that video to go viral, besides the referrer header. They have experimented with other ways to do this in the past. For example, they used to have a direct friends list on YouTube where you could share videos to specific friends or groups of friends at once.
lathiat 3y ago
The theory has been at some point they'll remove the separate ID and have a single ID that encompasses both. Due to things such as Apple's automatic tracking link removal (but also many others): https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/08/ios-17-link-tracking-protection/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/08/ios-17-link-tracking-protecti...
- lazycouchpotato 3y ago
  Facebook started doing this a while ago https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/07/facebook-is-now-encrypting-links-to-prevent-url-stripping.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/07/facebook-is-n... Reddit too, but I don't have a news source for it. I can only share a link I came across: https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/LCv7yIwiVF https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/LCv7yIwiVF If you click on the link, you can see all the tracking parameters in the URL bar. Whosever link this is used the official Reddit iOS app to generate the unique URL.
sphars 3y ago
Not a browser extension, but an Android app. URLChecker[0]. You can "share" to this app, and can clean the URLs (uses ClearURLs database) and check for redirects. You can also do more advanced URL rewrites (such as Twitter -> Nitter) and open URLs in specific browsers [0]: https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker
fudged71 3y ago
I just noticed today that Arc Browser cleans URLs for sharing
user3939382 3y ago
They have a bazillion dollars and I’m sure complete control over Congress to the extent they need it. I doubt they’re desperate.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago

They can obviously generate indistinguishably unique urls for video sharing links if they wanted, this is just easier to implement (though not by much). Also there’s no treachery afoot here… go ahead and remove it, the stakes here are very low.

pdimitar 3y ago
Well exactly, they are outright adding an URL parameter and of course I'll remove it. Doesn't mean that they don't rely on less tech-inclined people to never even notice, and I am sure that's a core part of their strategy anyway. As for the indistinguishable URLs, you have a solid point there but I'd think there would be a lot of outrage because people want those URLs to generate previews when pasted in pages, social media comments etc. Not to mention all the false positives generated by people embedding such URLs. So I think for now we're safe on that front, they would poison their own well if they went ahead with encoded URL identifiers, happily. But again, I am very amused that they just outright added "?si=..." -- to me that reeks of desperation and I have to admit that I enjoy it when Google is struggling.
- WendyTheWillow 3y ago
  If this "reeks to you of desperation", then you're putting a lot more emotional energy into the situation than is necessary. There is no world in which this is desperation on the part of YouTube, that's not a reasonable view.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago

Better to keep the ID and change it to 31337.

NamTaf 3y ago

ClearURLs is the one I use: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/

woodruffw 3y ago

> The fact that Google has to resort to this is amusing. To me it means they can't do it any other way and are now leaving themselves wide open for us the techies to strip that tracking ID; which we absolutely will do. I don't think it means that (although I wish it did): it's just another connecting datapoint, and more connecting datapoints are always good from their perspective. (I think it's helpful to think about these things from Google's perspective: they're running a service that ~billions of people access and share daily. 95% or more of those people won't know how to strip those identifiers; the 5% or so that do are put on the slightly-less-happy-path for social graph discovery.)

pdimitar 3y ago
Oh I am sure it will have positive impact on their tracking; that much is guaranteed. What I am saying is that they chose a very lame way to do it and this robs them of very valuable data they could get from those 5% and I'd argue that they really would want to know how you and me are moving and discovering stuff when we're outside YouTube. Trying hard not to have the protagonist syndrome here but I'd think they are more interested in how the non-couch-surfers do stuff. Though a very good counter-argument would be that they can now target ads better and probably gain slightly higher conversation regardless of us the 5% stripping the tracking parameter, and that would still be a huge financial win for them. All in all, my stance is: let them have it, but I still find it reassuring that they are not even covert about it which gives us a lot of options on how to deny them. Finally, there's the possibility of various browsers and addons to start automatically removing the tracking parameter, though such movements usually take years.
- eichin 3y ago
  The same group of people that are doing the best job of avoiding their advertising? I would expect them to prefer that we went away quietly :-)
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Yeah but we will not go away. Let them keep trying, they will have to start banning IPs and they will be taken them to court because I pay for Premium and I can share links to their videos however I wish.

schiffern 3y ago

ClearURLs is a great "set it and forget it" addon. Don't leave home without it. If you want power and customizability, check out Request Control. uBlock Origin can also block this by adding the following rules (Dashboard > My Filters tab): ! tracking param https://twitter.com/OldRowSwig/status/1732112446943269347 ||youtube.com^$removeparam=si ||youtu.be^$removeparam=si

dhx 3y ago
ClearURLs implemented the rule to remove the si attribute on November 5th[1]. I think a better approach though is to whitelist allowed attributes rather than blacklist disallowed attributes. For example, if you get a URL starting "https://www.youtube.com/watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?" then the only allowed attributes are v, t, etc and everything else would be stripped. [1] https://github.com/ClearURLs/Rules/commit/f4d52da5902640d4d00613424b7428912e9eafff https://github.com/ClearURLs/Rules/commit/f4d52da5902640d4d0...
- schiffern 3y ago
  Request Control[0] can do this. Create a rule with the following settings: Host: *.youtube.com Path: /watch* Types: Document Action: Filter Check "Filter URL Redirection" List of Trimmed Query Parameters: v t list index time_continue Check "Invert trimming" 'time_continue' is used when you navigate to Youtube from an embedded video. 'index' is used in playlists. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/requestcontro...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- MiguelX413 3y ago
  lc should be allowed in addition to v and t, as link to specific comments under a video!

judge2020 3y ago

> they can't do it any other way This is purely an extra data point; without it, there is 0 attribution for which user is responsible for a link to a video causing that video to go viral, besides the referrer header. They have experimented with other ways to do this in the past. For example, they used to have a direct friends list on YouTube where you could share videos to specific friends or groups of friends at once.

lathiat 3y ago

The theory has been at some point they'll remove the separate ID and have a single ID that encompasses both. Due to things such as Apple's automatic tracking link removal (but also many others): https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/08/ios-17-link-tracking-protection/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/08/ios-17-link-tracking-protecti...

lazycouchpotato 3y ago
Facebook started doing this a while ago https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/07/facebook-is-now-encrypting-links-to-prevent-url-stripping.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/07/facebook-is-n... Reddit too, but I don't have a news source for it. I can only share a link I came across: https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/LCv7yIwiVF https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/LCv7yIwiVF If you click on the link, you can see all the tracking parameters in the URL bar. Whosever link this is used the official Reddit iOS app to generate the unique URL.

sphars 3y ago

Not a browser extension, but an Android app. URLChecker[0]. You can "share" to this app, and can clean the URLs (uses ClearURLs database) and check for redirects. You can also do more advanced URL rewrites (such as Twitter -> Nitter) and open URLs in specific browsers [0]: https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker

fudged71 3y ago

I just noticed today that Arc Browser cleans URLs for sharing

user3939382 3y ago

They have a bazillion dollars and I’m sure complete control over Congress to the extent they need it. I doubt they’re desperate.