Facebook Is Now Encrypting Links to Prevent URL Stripping

schneier.com

45 points·jtbayly··9 comments

I've often read on HN people accusing developers of being complicit and asking how anybody could agree to do XY&Z. This is one place where I am left asking the same question.

How could this ever be anything except anti-user? Link shorteners are one thing, and random unique IDs in a URL are understandable, but in what world does encrypting the URL do anything except harm the user?

Right. What would that ticket title even look like?

"Users are stripping tracking info from our URLs. Data is our lifeblood - we need some way to stop them from doing this!!"

-- Your friendly neighborhood PM

“Encrypt URLs to prevent stripping”

Users don't care about URLS. As long as their link takes them to where they are going, they will happily click on it and share it.

Perhaps something like:

We provide services to people in exchange for advertising revenue. Some people try to abuse this agreement through URL stripping. That means those who don't URL strip are subsidizing those who do. This isn't fair, so we will use technical methods to prevent it from happening.

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32129100 from 1 day ago (210 comments)

Actually, dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32117489 (is HN a valid citation? ;)

a decentralized alternative supporting user concerns instead of corpo crap is trivial to implement

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