It seems like YouTube have changed their link tracking to include more information
Up until like a year or two ago, YouTube links always used to be pretty clean. The format was youtube .com/watch?v=[video_ID]. A year or two ago, they started adding a tracking suffix on, so it would be youtube .com/watch?v=[video_ID] &si=[tracking_ID].
Over the last day or so, I've noticed links with a different format, youtube .com/watch?v=[video_ID]&pp=[tracking_ID] - only the pp= string is much longer than the si= string. This can only be because they're including more information in it. What that information is is anyone's guess.
This is basically a PSA to watch YouTube links more carefully, as people are by and large complacent with them (moreso than other links) and never even realised the si= change, let alone this new pp= change.
It could also be that the change to pp= is meant to circumvent communities, like this one, which automatically filter out the si= suffix. They may have decided to address that, then took the opportunity to make their tracking more severe.
gotta chop off the pp
Wasn’t their a Firefox plugin that did this? I recall a while ago to help do the same with Amazon but I never installed it and I don’t remember what it was called…
Firefox has "copy link without site tracking" built in now
Doesn't work for
&pp=yet, though. At least, it doesn't on ESR (and, by extension, Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser).that's interesting. do you perhaps also know what the si param contains?
Oh, that's how you get it. I just tried it and got the regular si link which doesn't seem to have valid b64 data.
Lmfao, this community has automatically removed the si= suffix in my second link. But it didn't remove the pp= suffix....
Edit: Fixed, finally. It kept trying to convert my links all over the place. They're not meant to be links, just a clear description of the syntax.
Since a long time, out of respect for others, I only share YT videos like this: youtube,com/embed/[video_ID]
But also yourself. Like this you won't get grouped by Google with other people online.
I know, that is the idea
https://openuserjs.org/scripts/Kraust/Youtube_Embed_Redirect
Little script with few bytes, I installed it as extension. It redirect embedded when I click on a YT link or open a video in a new tab. It0s more confortable as edit the URL by hand, the script don't do other than this. Apart you can watch it in full tab size, better quality and without ads. You can search the Video also with Andi and watch it there embedded and sandboxed in the search result.
Thanks for shedding light on this. I've also noticed the same thing on Instagram links. They now have a "igsh=" added to track sharing.
What about that youtu.be one
So long as there's no extra suffix after, it shouldn't be so bad. So if you have
youtu.be/?v=[video_ID]it's fine, but if there's a&si=or&pp=or&anything=, then that's most likely tracking and should be removed.?is the start of the suffixes,&denotes a change in suffix. Every video has av=suffix to denote the video itself, but everything else isn't needed.Technically speaking they are query parameters not suffixes.
Can't they be both? Potato potahto.
Thank you for the correct terminology though.
It will destroy the Universe if we do that. /s