TL;DR: Strip the tracking junk off a link before you paste it anywhere. Better yet, put the content on Free2Z and share that.
What's actually in that link
Hit "Share" on YouTube, X, Instagram or TikTok and you don't get the address of the thing. You get the address plus a tag that identifies you as the sharer. Every open, click and preview fetch of that link reports back: this account shared it, and here's where it landed.
The usual offenders
- YouTube:
si=,pp=,feature=(keept=, that's the timestamp) - X / Twitter:
s=,t= - Instagram:
igsh=/igshid= - TikTok:
_t=,_r=,is_from_webapp=,sender_device= - Facebook:
fbclid=,mibextid= - Spotify:
si= - Reddit:
share_id=,utm_* - LinkedIn:
trk=,lipi= - Amazon:
ref=,tag=,pd_rd_* - Everywhere:
utm_*,gclid=,msclkid=,mc_eid=
Short share links like reddit.com/r/…/s/…, facebook.com/share/… and vm.tiktok.com/… are the same thing in disguise. There's no parameter to delete because the whole link is the tracker. Open it, then share the real URL.
Your link, my exposure
Paste a link into a chat, post or email and something fetches it to build a preview: your device, my device, or a server in between, depending on the app. Mastodon instances fetch it. Matrix homeservers fetch it. Plenty of clients fetch it the moment the message lands, before anyone clicks anything.
If that link carries your tracking token, the platform now gets a request tagged with your ID, arriving from an IP, server or logged-in session tied to me. You just told YouTube or X that you and I are connected. I never agreed to that. I never even clicked. Platforms have used exactly this to suggest the sharer as a contact to whoever opened the link. That's what the token is for.
This is an ethics problem, not a tidiness problem
Tracking codes exist to map who knows whom, who influences whom, and how content moves, so that map can be sold. Nobody on the receiving end consented. Every tagged link you share is unpaid labor for a surveillance business, paid for with other people's privacy.
"I didn't think about it" is not a defense. Deleting everything after the ? takes two seconds. If you share tracking codes mindlessly, you're working for free for companies that rob everyone's privacy without asking.
Basic hygiene
- Delete everything after
?unless you know you need it (a timestamp, a search query). - Resolve short share links before passing them on.
- Let tools do it: Firefox's "Copy Link Without Site Tracking," Brave's built-in query stripping, or uBlock Origin / ClearURLs.
- Turn off link previews in apps that let you (Signal does).
Especially not here
If you're on Free2Z, you already know all of this. Free2Z exists because privacy matters and these companies don't respect it. Dropping a tracker-laden YouTube or X link here drags their surveillance into a space built to keep it out.
Better still, don't depend on them at all. Put the content on Free2Z in the first place. No tracking codes, no shadow social graph, no free data for immoral companies. Then share the Free2Z link. It doesn't need cleaning.
