31
Reddit Tracks My Shared Urls
(lemmy.world)
Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and pretty much a major social media sites do this. Usually the tracking ID follows the ? in the url so it’s easy to remove. But yeah avoiding those places is probably more ideal.
I only noticed this shit recently man after the Israel/Twitter stuff. I always run a link through claude now to clean it first before posting anywhere. Sounds paranoid but fuck it makes me feel much more comfortable about it.
Does Lemmy track? I'm new here
As far as I know, no. The platform is open source so anyone should be able to check. Plus each instance is run by different people since anyone could spin one up. Since there’s no advertising $$ as this isn’t corporate owned there’s not really a reason to track users either.
All good. Was a little worried when they asked for my email to sign up. Seen someone else saying they werent asked but I was. On Mirage for example I wasn't asked for anything so it threw me a little but. new here so still a bit clueless
Isn't that just from sharing? I usually just copy the URL and send that, not through any plugin or sharing add-on on the site.
Sharing from the app will create a different URL, where you can't just snip off the end to clean it up. You have to resolve it first
Reddit doesn't have one any more, they do this in the backend to stop getting hatred
I mean, they still have UTM tracking in their URLs like:
/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
But you’re right I don’t see a random user agent string in there
I guess this is from the browser, I told about the app
This is also a great way to dox yourself. With a number of platforms that do this, opening the link will greet some users with "see what else USERNAME is doing"
So if you share a reddit post with a family member, they might learn your Reddit username. Likewise if you share a tiktok or instagram post on reddit, then people might see your real name.
It's hard to tell in a textual post but are you surprised by this? Genuine question as I've not met anyone in a very long time that wasn't aware that all corporate URLs on the web are tracking absolutely everything they can about you.
Go to a reddit post, click share it will copy a url like this:
reddit.com/r/test/s/shdhhs25h2g35s
when you paste this url to browser, it opens with ?sid=shhdjs52h2 so this is tracking id
You misunderstand my post. I was saying that I thought EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET knew that these sites are tracking you. My 75 year old mother is aware that all corporate run sites she visits on the web are tracking links she clicks.
Some nerds might come in here trying to convince you that isn’t evidence that you’re being tracked, but just a change in the url so that if you copy the address from your address bar it’ll have the tracking id in it, and that if you remove it when sharing you’re fine, but don’t listen to them. Leave the corporate social media behind and embrace fedi.
i have knowledge about the internet, social media and coding. Nobody warned me actually. I understood it myself
That's why you never use the share button in an app. And have something like URLcheck to sanitise links people send you and ones you share yourself
Full truth is that people just need to stop using the apps and use the browsers. I've never downloaded or used a site specific app on any of my phones. Actually delete those fuckers because of the tracking built in, so if I can't get to a site via mobile browser, I don't and just hit it up at home on the computer. Nothing on any social media site is so important that it can't wait until I get home.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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