Advice for people new to Mastodon:
If you are going to post a link to an article - please take the time to remove the tracking from the link before posting it.
(In other words, find the ? in the link and delete it and everything after it. THEN post the link.)
It only takes a second or to to do, and it prevents websites from tracking people across the internet.
@SpaceCadet Deleting everything in a URL after the question mark certainly works.
When a friend sends me a URL that includes a question mark and then some tracking goop, I like to replace the tracking text with something more fun before I visit the website. Let the person doing the tracking wonder why the tracking info says that the link came from the PlatypusPrincipality campaign or some such.
I wonder if anybody else does this.
@SpaceCadet
Ahem
Lucky the Fediverse is big enough for the two of us
😜
@SpaceCadet I use Neat URL in Firefox. Helps a bit.
@SpaceCadet Also a redirect amp to html is useful:
@SpaceCadet An exception, sometimes the stuff after the "?" isn't tracking, it's required parameters. Example:
https://www.solipsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/MJ_Wiki.py?ScheduleOfTalks
I agree, removing all the tracking crap is a Good Thing(tm), but removing everything after the "?" isn't always the right thing to do.
Which is awkward and annoying.
I fully agree?id=108556968&fbclid=IwAR0J4JvsdffzZE3uz3bO528EoidlNL4ncfgedfzesfnfsja0zhJaSBzpbt
@SpaceCadet also https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clean-links-webext/ but it can break sites in unexpected ways
ClearUrls browser addon does the job
