Damn Social Media Trackers
If you don't know already, I like dogs. Therefore, it's not a leap to believe that my recent video bing is all things dogs. Life feels hectic and dogs are fun. Plus dogs could give two shites about the crazy going on so long as they have a treat. And, gosh, those cute videos of puppies being sassy, it GETS me every time. And occasionally, I see a video from The Dodo about a dog that's been rescued that gives me heartbreak and joy. I can't spend too much time there because then I go down the rabbit hole of "How do I change my career to SAVE ALL THE DOGS?!"
Where was I? I started talking dogs and everything went furry.
Oh social media and sharing!
I don't dabble in (non-business) social media much, other than the previously mentioned dog video bing. There is a part of me that feels I'm revealing too much by even watching videos, reels, stories, or whatever they are called. I know the services hosting the media I consume track how long I spend wasting my time watching/looking at the content, which ones I pause on, which ones I swipe through quickly, which ones I like, which ones I save, which ones I laugh at/love/drool/etc. that are sent to me, and which ones I've shared. Then they can make connections around content you like and the content your connections' like. They can build profiles and all that jazz or pooey, depending on your point of view.
Aside: There's really only one set of accounts, good.boy.ollie/good.boy.tato, that I give direct feedback to (a.k.a. hearts) because they are so DAMN CUTE. Everything else that I enjoy, I hope that my happy mind waves are strong enough to travel through the interwebs to the content creator/sharer's brain so they know I appreciate them. And if they aren't, I'm sure AI will figure out how to do that for me someday.
In my binging, I found a video I just had to share, but the person I wanted to share it with doesn't use the application. Instead of share, select profile, and send, I reverted to the tried-and-true method of copy and paste. In my haste, I copied the link, opened the application I wanted to share the link in (a.k.a. text messaging), paste the link, click send followed by additional commentary on why I was sharing said video. All steps taken quickly without reviewing anything because, well, I got lazy.
And only after I hit send did I see it. The whole link. DAMN IT, I forgot to remove my identifier! ISKTBN!
What identifier? You may be asking.
When you share content from a social media application or even from emails and other websites, parameters are added to the links to track who is visiting the site, from where, the original source, etc.
Within the social media application when I'm sharing content, there isn't much I can do to share videos without revealing to the application that I'm sharing or what I'm sharing or how often I'm sharing or to whom. BUT when I want to share outside of the application, there IS something I can do.
Take Instagram, for example.
- When you go to share a link, you get the link: https://www.instagram.com/good.boy.ollie
- And the identifier tied to your account: igsh=cnMmorelettersandnumbers
- For a full URL that looks like this: https://www.instagram.com/good.boy.tato?igsh=cnMmorelettersandnumbers
This allows the application to continue to track how you are sharing content outside of the application. They can even see who you are sharing it with (to some extent) and if they too have an account, are external to their service, and so on. When you are sharing in bulk (let's say on a website), you may get associated with lots of users.
If you want to share outside of an application or website without tying your identifiers to the URL, just strip the link down to it's core and BOOM, tiny bit of privacy preserved. In the Instagram example above, it's the part before the "?".
With what little privacy we have in the US over our data, it is comforting to know we have a tiny bit of control. And if I get a little bit of control, I'm gonna TAKE IT.
I know that tracking is necessary to business, heck it's done in email and helps us make sure we are doing all the right things. But it (appending identifiers for tracking) can also be unnecessary and intrusive, especially when the action goes beyond what an individual is doing and ties into what others are doing as well and how they are connected.
If you aren't able to identify what part of the link is necessary to have and which parts you can strip, usually you can start by removing items after the "?" and reloading the page to see if it works. If not, start at the end and slowly remove items and refresh to see when the page no longer points to the content you want. There are also apps like GNATCleaner that helps remove these trackers from social media applications when you are trying to share content.
And so my rant on sharing content comes to a close.
Happy scrolling and beware of those DAMN social media trackers.
Side note, as I wrap up this article, I literally just realized that the blog image is a dog. Hand to God, I didn't even consider I would be writing about dogs when I was creating it. And when I was writing it, I forgot I had even selected the dog as my frontman. I want to take the credit that I planned it all beautifully, but, alas, coincidence and perhaps and unhealthy obsession with dogs are the best creators.
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