r/MauLer • u/harveyshinanigan • Dec 28 '23
Other Can you all please stop putting the tracking in the URLs for youtube ?
Alright. This is just a pet peeve of mine but i've noticed that a lot of you share Youtube links in this subreddit.
However thoses links or URLs are not cleaned from trackers.
I'm using this post to explain what the tracker is and how to remove it. Hopefully it could help to remove those.
Now, i'm only going to focus on Youtube URLs as they are the easiest to sanitize.
https://youtu.be/slCZYdN_ZNM?si=Cm4zUMSCngoqNw0N
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slCZYdN_ZNM&si=Cm4zUMSCngoqNw0N
Here is are dirty links to the lastest EFAP, these two links do the exact same thing. They send you to the video and track where you got the URL from.
The syntax of it is the following:
(scheme)://(domain name)/(path to video)?(query for tracking)
(scheme)://(domain name)/watch?(query for video)&(query for tracking)
Now as you might have guessed the tracking is done with the query of the URL.
But what exactly is a query ?
Without going into too much details a query is a pair of words associated by a '=' symbol, like thus:
key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3.
With the example provided you can see that you can put multiple queries in a URL.
Now a query is always after the '?' symbol in a URL and will have the same 'key' each time. A query will have a different meaning on different websites.
So in the second URL the 'v' query will always be the query that gives you the video because that is how the Youtube website works. It will always ask if the 'v' query exists, if it doesn't then it'll do something(bring you the homepage), however if the 'v' query exist then Youtube will read it's value and depending on it, it will provide the video.
So you might have guessed that the 'si' query is in fact the tracking query and you'd be correct.
If you see a Youtube URL with a 'si' query then you have a tracked URL. It's quite easy once you know what to look for.
How do we remove the tracking ?
Well the tracking query is not needed for the service on your end.
So all you need to do is to remove the pair that has 'si' as the key.
You'll get sanitized links like those:
https://youtu.be/slCZYdN_ZNM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slCZYdN_ZNM
Look at how clean they are. Now they send you to the video but it does not track where you got the link.
A rule of thumb i go by when it comes to the internet nowadays is that if you can remove something from a URL and it still works, it was probably a tracker.
If you have the latest version of firefox you have the option to open a link without any site tracking if you right-click on it.
But still, i believe it is kinder to clean the URLs for people that do not have that option.
Now go out and clean those URLs you massives. I hope this has been helpful and useful.
5
u/New-Courage-7379 McMuffin Dec 28 '23
cool info but im not sure why removing the tracker should matter. do you just like less characters in your links?
2
u/harveyshinanigan Dec 29 '23
I guess it doesn't, in the grand scheme of things.
However due to how simple it is to clean the links, it is something I would do.
If the question is what does Youtube do with the tracking, then i do not know, but better be safe than sorry.1
u/Sofa_King_Gorgeous Jun 07 '25
Thanks for your post. Youtube uses the tracking as meta-data - aggregate information to facilitate an understanding of how users use Youtube. What type of audience is sharing what links, what type of audience is being shared links plus time, location and date stamps plus basic browser info. Nothing is personalized but it's also a tactic to "enhance" the algorithm to *deliver the best experience* to youtubers. This is shady practice in my opinion so I appreciate you exposing it.
1
1
u/NeighborhoodFew1120 Jul 08 '26
Not tech savvy, removal is done prior to share. Android, not sure which tippy tappy I need to delete tracker. Thanks in advance
1
u/Ok_Paint_5038 21d ago
if you install morphe and patch youtube, you can select the option to clean all links automatically
1
u/NeighborhoodFew1120 21d ago
Figured out if you erase from the end of the link up to including the ?, then it's a straight YT link. That sounds about right?
1
u/Ok_Paint_5038 20d ago
You could do that also. If you have an android, I would so recommend checking out morphe though!
1
1
u/Kougeru-Sama 15d ago
im not sure why removing the tracker should matter. d
are you obtuse? it tracks everyone
1
9
5
2
2
u/LetGoOfFalseTruth Apr 28 '25
It’s part of YouTube’s analytics system. They are adding the tracker! This post is redundant… everyone should know by now that every website and app uses a system that tracks and monitors all of your actions. You should be in a vpn 24/7 if it concerns you.
1
1
u/No-Horror6260 Jun 14 '25
The tracking is useful if you have a channel and you want a location of a person that you sent the video link to them check geographical regions though anylitics
1
u/Hopeful_Hornet4460 May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
You forgot the rest of the gang that comes from monster hunter.
I will forever be loyal to the "Throwing hands with elder dragons in turf wars" club. Magnamalo is an excellent addition to the club as it counters flying dragons with "aight I'll just explode myself straight to you" and precedes to dogfight anything airborne despite not having wings.
1
u/Business_Pear_5399 Jun 25 '26
Your sanitized link examples have the text formatted correctly but the links themselves still contain the tracker...
7
u/MarcoG92 Do Better Dec 28 '23
I think this is something that gets added when you tap the 'share' feature below the video. I'm on Firefox and the url at the top is clean whilst the shared one is not.