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Comment by woadwarrior01 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry, but it's my pet peeve. If you're on iOS/macOS I built a 100% free and privacy-friendly app to get rid of tracking parameters from hundreds of different websites, not just X/Twitter.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clean-links-qr-code-reader/id6...

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This is great! I have been meaning to implement this sort of thing in my existing Shortcuts flow but I see you already support it in Shortcuts! Thank you for this!

Anywhere I can toss a Tip for this free app?

I'm glad you like it. :)

It works on iOS? That’s cool. I’ll give it a go.

So what is your motivation for doing this, incidentally? Can you be explicit about it? I am genuinely curious.

Especially when it’s to the point of, you know, nagging/policing people to do it the way you’d prefer, when you could just redirect your router requests from x.com to xcancel.com

It's not particularly about x.com, hundreds of site like x, youtube, facebook, linkedin, tiktok etc surreptitious add tracking parameters to their links. The iOS Messages app even hides these tracking parameters. I don't like being surreptitiously tracked online and judging by the success of my free app, there are millions of people like me.

so, since these companies have to comply with removing PII, is the worst thing that could happen to me, that I get ads that are more likely to be interesting to me?

i’m not being facetious, honest question, especially considering ads are the only thing paying these people these days

The worst thing that could happen is that you get caught in some government dragnet based on your historical viewing data and get disappeared because (as is the nature of dragnet searches) no matter how innocent you are you still look guilty.

Who has to comply with removing PII? Your profile, yours, mapped to a special snowflake ID, is packaged and sold across a network of 2500 - 4000 buyers, including in particular those that clean, tie (a surprisingly small footprint turns into its own "natural primary key"), qualify, and sell on to agencies. No step in this is illegal.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/23/24277679/atlas-privacy-b...

my first and last name is already a "natural primary key" (every single google result of Peter Marreck is me), so I've already had to give that up a long time ago. So nothing new is lost I guess?

The more data they have on you, the more valuable that data is to a third party. So they sell your data to someone else, who then phones you based on your known deep interest in <whatever it was that tracked you>. Or spams you. Or messages you. Or whatever method they think will most get your attention.

If you don't give them that information, they can't sell it, and the buyers won't annoy you.

It's not that the ads you get are more interesting, it's that you get more ads because they think they know more about you.

IMO the tracking, advertising, and attention market might just be societies biggest problem.

Certainly it employs a lot of people, as do cartels.

Helpful type of nagging for me. Most here would agree they are not a positive aspect of the modern digital experience, calling it out gently without hostility is not bad. It might not be quite self policing but some of that with good reason is not bad for healthy communities IMO.

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