On my forum, youtube links get stripped of any extra url parameters. Every site should have to do that.

That's what I use!

Usually parameters are easy to understand. Like the time parameter in yt URLs, which is t=180 (meaning 180 seconds from the beginning of the video). Usually, parameters that are a string of seemingly random letters are UIDs or tracking parameters. Whenever I see a URL with one or multiple of those, I start deleting them and seeing if the URL still works. In 90% of the cases, it still does. Amazon is one of the worst offenders, with usually 4 or 5 random looking parameters that can be deleted without affecting the functionality of the URL.

I've seen YT links with both si and is.

Yeah I’ve only seen si but that’s good to know

I’ve seen it when opening shared links in the browser but it’s possible that you need to be logged in for it to show

That's a great extra layer of protection, but people shouldn't rely on it and get/stay in the habit of always removing the tracking code themselves.

It can't share my personal account if I'm never signed in.

You can turn location tagging off globally

That's one of the first things I did when configuring my kids phones.

Sample the people around you in real life. They don't know any better, regardless of age. The group that experienced it has already largely forgotten it because the link purpose got obfuscated and the need became obsolete in everyday use

I have an iOS shortcut that remove exit meta data.

til people don't reflexively strip out everything after the ? unless you know exactly what it's doing

It doesn't do it in comments, just when you make a post.

Blurry deliberations are typical. As time goes on, "millennial" will become more accurate as the differences between xennial and zillennial become smaller and smaller in comparison to differences between _ennial and alpha or beta or delta. I just take issue with acting like direct url interface was the experience of a generation, and not a short-lived blip for the gen pop that has already been forgotten, especially as full url purpose has shifted to something arguably evil.

Not sure if my anxiety is justified here, but I am not tech savvy whatsoever. And I worry about all the things I’m doing that’s probably completely giving myself away that I’m just unaware of. I didn’t know about this at all.

If it helps, for Androids share YT link to something like Untracker to remove unwanted nonsense from the url which you can then pass on safely (also works for things such as Amazon links).

For images, share to something such as Imagepipe first to remove location data. Other apps such as Aves Libre gallery or image Toolbox also strip this data but Imagepipe is simple - share image to it & it passes the image directly to your messaging app after stripping the data

tbf, it's intentionally designed to be malicious and deceiving

pretty much everything that has a "share" button does this. it's not to help you share the link more easily than copying from the address bar - it's to harvest your data

if it's obfuscated, then it's assumed to be malicious

The frequency with which I've seen the si attribute included in youtube links has made me painfully aware of just how many people are not using the internet the same way I do; they're experiencing the internet through a handful of mobile apps, not through a web browser on the desktop.

Even then.. what proportion of people do you think know the parts of a URL? Or know what a URL even is...

You may be in a bubble, friend

Blurry deliberations are typical.

Yes, though my point that I wanted to add is that people seem to treat generational terms as if they’re a fact of reality instead of a very shaky conceptualization of cultural differences between birth groups that are already influenced by a lot more factors than just when people are born. It’s much more of a spectrum than a strict range of demographics inherent to humanity.

Even voyager gives a link to vger.to when you hit share instead of a direct link to the thing you want to share. No idea what they are doing with it (other than trying to redirect it to the app). Maybe it's set up to just use the localhost and that's all it does, but I usually strip that part out because I have no idea either way.

Yeah, it's easily possible to set it up to save the original link somewhere hidden. Same reason why you shouldn't reuse passwords because it's trivial to set up a site to look like it's doing it right from the outside but actually saves all passwords in plaintext for owners, admins, or disgruntled staff to look at later and see if it logs in to your email.

fitting

I first heard about it on reddit but it was before the API exodus, so...

Traffic is roughly 70-80% mobile on most websites I know.

Since 4 March 2026 I am seeing "is=" in some YouTube links instead of "si=", also with the 16 character ID.

I know all this stuff and even I don't look at the technical stuff in the URL. I just make sure it doesn't have dQw4w9WgXcQ in there.

We set up a bot on r/asmr to reply to anyone posting a YouTube link containing the "si=" parameter, warning that it was likely a tracking ID that Google could potentially use to tie their YouTube account to their Reddit account with some degree of probability and suggesting that they delete their post and re-post without the si= parameter. Many were grateful for the warning and info but some didn't care. We decided to disable the warning after a few weeks.

It is . But now you know . Don't freak - and you might even learn how to install a privacy based browser, vpn, or operating system. Keep the tinfoil har dude and best of luck

I do use a VPN, but tha'ts about it.

t= is the only useful parameter in YouTube URLs (that I know of). If not for that we could just strip all of the parameters out.

This is why I use YouTube revanced. The features for it are great.

vger.to solely exists so i can text dumb memes to my non tech inclined friends, and they open in voyager on their device instead of the web.

It’s a dumb service and has zero analytics other than cpu disk bandwidth use lol

most people don't even know what an URL is, and how it's structured. if their browser does not remove the tracking parameters, they won't get removed.

even some IT pros are leaving it in, knowing well what it does. some people just couldn't care less.

Done. Thank you.

I use this on Android to sanitise links I sent out as well as clean incoming links before viewing them.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.svenjacobs.app.leon

Iykyk

I refuse to search for that user, but dammit am I curious.

You should also known that TikTok does this by default and the generated code is impossible to remove afaik, it's part of the video identifier.

So when sharing a tiktok video always download it and share the file.

Me neither. Even tried to host it locally at home it the hopes that a private IP would go under googles radar, but after a month or so they blocked me as well. Same goes for LibreTube NewPipe and what not. All just fail on me after a while. The only way is to make it usable with uBlock + Unhook and Morphee Patches on Android. Its honestly not a bad experience except for the added setTimeout when Youtube notices. :)

I'm not an IT pro but I am ashamed I didn't know this. I've spent a lot of time cutting up youtube links for shiz.

this video explains it all

I searched for you and it's actually worth it.

It should be common practice if you commonly share links. Try removing the query string (everything after and including the question mark). See if you get to the same page. If you do, don’t use the query string.

Query string parameters are rather often used for tracking. Look for gclid parameters after you click a google ad, for example.

If you never sign into YouTube and sharing links from a third party application, what is it that they append? Curious what makes up that shared id.