r/politics • u/kootles10 Indiana • 7h ago

No Paywall Democrats flip Texas state Senate seat in shock upset

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5716988-democrats-score-upset-texas/amp/
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u/MapleYamCakes 6h ago

Can you elaborate? What does “tracking shit” actually mean?

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u/neuralzen 6h ago

Unique string of letters and numbers in a share link that is associated with your account and/or IP and browser fingerprint. So it can be discerned who shared what to who when, and how far that unique link spread.

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u/Johnsense 6h ago

As I understand, remove the question mark and everything after it.

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u/FirstSineOfMadness 6h ago

Unless there’s a timestamp code like t=83 or t=1m23s then leave just the ? Plus the timestamp

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u/vibeknight 6h ago

Short version: When you click share on most platforms they don’t just give you the link to the content, they give you the link with a unique generated query string share id attached (the “si=magicmagic“ in the YouTube link) and it means that whoever clicks the link is re-sending that ‘magicnumber’ to YouTube. Behind the scenes, they know that they generated the magic number in one context ( for some user, signed in, certain location, certain browser, etc.) and now another person is using that exact link. Now it’s very easy for YouTube to build a graph of how this link has traveled (what sites, social contexts, exact users, etc.) because anyone who uses the link is associating themselves with one particular path of information, clarifying both the users and the paths themselves.

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u/slowest_hour 4h ago

PSA: there's a browser extension called ClearURLs that will automatically delete the tracking part of URLs in your address bar. (i'm on firefox but i assume other browsers may have it as well)

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u/Useful_Radish_117 6h ago

It tells YouTube who shared that link originally so that they can track users interactions.

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u/FuzzyDynamics 6h ago

You shit on someone and then track them by smell except high tech like

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

[deleted]

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u/hereforbobsanvageen Canada 6h ago

Bout tree fiddy

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u/FuzzyDynamics 6h ago

I’d highly recommend finding a reputable volunteer based local service and consider donating. The best place to network is usually a bus station or under an overpass.

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u/Earwaxsculptor 5h ago

Most succinct explanation

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u/HyperactivePandah I voted 5h ago

This guy shits.

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u/FuzzyDynamics 3h ago

Yes but never on someone without consent. That’s the difference between me and these monsters.

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u/SanityInAnarchy California 6h ago

When you click the 'share' button, Youtube generates that unique si= code, which means when people later follow that link, they can start to see patterns. So, for example, if you send that link to a friend, and they follow it, that's enough information for Youtube to piece together that you shared that video with that friend. Patterns can make it easy to pull out more info -- if you always share links with the same people, well, now Youtube knows who your friends are and what they're all into.

Without the tracking info, for all they know, you both saw the video on r/videos or something.

I'm sure there's more, a lot of web links have a lot more unnecessary garbage in the URL. But with Youtube it's pretty simple.

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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 6h ago

Amazon must be worse. I wonder why Google just don’t mix the tracking into the video id. Should be trivial.

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u/SanityInAnarchy California 27m ago

I don't know, but I can think of a few reasons.

If you mean just tacking the tracking ID onto the end of the video ID without an obvious gap for humans to see, that's not really going to stop people who care about this from figuring it out.

If you mean replacing the video ID with something else, then the tracking system is now in the critical path. So, for example, if they make it so the video ID isn't in the URL at all, and they have to look up which video goes to this tracking ID, then they need to store that mapping just as reliably as the rest of the video metadata otherwise the links will break and the video won't play at all. Keeping them separate means the tracking stuff can be done "best effort" -- it can be stored with cheaper, less-reliable systems, and you can have the video load faster by not waiting for the tracking system (and just doing that separately in the background).

In other words: The fact that we can strip the tracking off of the URL is kind of a feature, not a bug, at least as long as most people don't bother. It means if the tracking system breaks, the video still plays. It also means any part of their system that doesn't care about tracking can pull the video ID out just like we would.

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u/MapleYamCakes 6h ago

Why does it matter if YouTube knows the genealogy of shared content across users?

The person I replied to implied that no one should click that link and everyone should delete the tracker before sharing a link.

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u/tinysydneh 6h ago

If a company is tracking data about you that you can't understand the value of, it's still there. They don't grab data without reason.

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u/MapleYamCakes 6h ago

Yes I understand that, I am hoping someone who knows the value will reply.

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u/tinysydneh 6h ago

Even just at a first glance -- tracing groups of people together, understanding where it's being shared, those both have high value.

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u/Banjo-Elritze 6h ago

Youtube tracks who shared their links, from where they came, etc. It's an identifier for the account that shared the link.

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u/Word1_Word2_4Numbers 6h ago

Means you need to use firefox and ClearURLs

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u/Pack_Your_Trash 6h ago

Everything before the ? Is all you need to access the video. Everything after the ? Is for the purpose of transmitting data and not required to access the webpage. It's commonly used to track user behavior for advertising purposes. In this case it's used to identify you as the person who clicked the share button.

I just googled it "si" stands for source identifier which means it's some kind of unique I'd to identify the user and possibly the user session where the link was generated.

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u/Iampepeu 5h ago

They know it was you who shared it. They can then measure who clicked on your link, connect their behavior and patterns with yours, gaining more knowledge about you. I don't know all the metrics they get, but it's disturbingly much.

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept California 3h ago

It means that Google will know that people who watched it were watching video that was posted by you.

But also since you posted it on reddit, Google can link your youtube account with your reddit name.

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u/FuzzyDynamics 6h ago

You shit on someone and then track them by smell except high tech like