this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 114 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Of course it does. Firefoxes new ClearURL copy feature is great

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This was the final thing that convinced me to give Firefox another go, thank you.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

One of us! One of us! Firefox is fucking amazing, just set up all the recommended extensions like ublock origin and privacy badger.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I believe Spotify is doing something similar.

Would be nice if social networks and messengers would automatically strip these parameters.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Same with Reddit, FB Messenger, Instagram, TikTok... Some of them are harder to spot, like how Reddit now goes reddit.com/r/example/s/8913y4h93

Would be nice if social networks and messengers would automatically strip these parameters.

I started using URLCheck on Android and SO MANY links have some kind of tracker that you can drop and not lose any functionality. Things like Signal (and even Lemmy/Mastodon) could do something similar and throw up a little warning when it encounters a known tracker, then offer to clean the URL for you.

Another advantage is that the clean URLs are a lot more descriptive

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm using FairEmail on Android. When tapping a link, thr app detects tracking parameters and offers to remove them. I really like that feature and wish other apps would offer something similar.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

best filter maintainer ever

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

This list is a must.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure TikTok does it as well

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 11 months ago (9 children)

Do people use the share button rather than just copy the URL from the address bar? Am I just really old?

[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Am I just really old?

Sounds like you have cleaned a few trackballs in your days

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Now I just try to keep my regular balls clean.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

LemonpartyDOTcom

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Keep up the good fight, buddy

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago

Many people use a phone and many people have youtube app on it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you use youtube on a mobile app rather than a browser, it doesn't have an address bar

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Never use an app for what should be a web page.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (5 children)

An added benefit of the share button is that it generates a minified link – "https://youtu.be/abcde" instead of "https://youtube.com/watch?v=abcde". I find it neater.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/abcde

https://piped.video/watch?v=abcde

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I don't have a choice when using the app, though I have been removing the tracker from the URL.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Adds?

I thought they always had them?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They didn't until a few weeks/months ago on the web version. Not sure about mobile. I noticed when the generated links became twice as long.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No kidding? I always thought they had them. Hmm

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Do people not sanitize links they share? 90% of an amazon url is garbage referrer info.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I find it convenient to do so to follow channels.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

If you're on Android use grayjay, if you're on Linux use freetube. You can follow channels on both of those.

If using grayjay and you can afford it please do pay for the license; you're not technically required; it's based on the honor system, but it helps the developers at FUTO work on it and it helps them donate to other FOSS projects.

If you use freetube please donate to them, even a dollar, the developers will greatly appreciate it.

Let's support software that doesn't hate us!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Copy clean URLs with ClearURL

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Don't know if any other browsers do it, but Firefox for desktop added an option when right clicking links to copy without URL tracker. I don't know if it works on yt links, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This extension will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browsing through the Internet.

Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/

Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearurls/lckanjgmijmafbedllaakclkaicjfmnk/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Heads up, I had to remove this extension on my browser because some websites would get stuck in a redirect loop because it'd remove the tracking stuff it'd use in a redirect chain. Took me months to figure out what was causing it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is built-in to firefox rightclick menu when copying the URL, no extension needed. Less extensions means less fingerprint

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I made a PWA that can quickly remove tracking variables called Link Cleaner. If you install it through Chrome or another Chromium browser on Android, it shows up as a share target, so you can share links to Link Cleaner and then share again to the intended target.

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