Highlights The platform team has sent an Intent to Ship for the :has selector! Currently targeting Firefox 121. There’s a new item in the content context menu in Nightly ...
Currently still in Nightly and only on 'Copy Link'. Still nice progress though.
Had no idea something existed for this, I'm forever deleted annoying tracking info from links. Mozilla continues to impress me with their privacy additions... latest update notified me about email masking which looks like it'll be a major boon once I work out how to use it.
Clear URL is great. Beware that it can break some login and payment sites though. The Addon unfortunately lacks a whitelist so you have to turn it on and off, so it's easy to forget to turn back on.
This may be difficult to maintain as some query parameters might be necessary. How will they be sure they’re not stripping essential elements? Won’t this become an arms race to mask tracking elements as “legitimate” looking parameters?
most of the time sharing utm links isn't helpful to the origin as if you copy a link from your email it'll have medium=email, but actually should now be medium=direct
Another fine addition would be a cut of redirecting trash. If you post some link in some soc network, it would sometimes replace it with it's own link going through an outbound clicks tracker, safety pages 'Do you really want to follow it?' or just block you saying the link seems malicious.
I think Gmail on Android does this. Any link you click on in the app Firefox shows you the initial Google address before you go to the link you clicked on.
If you copy and paste the URL this doesn't happen.
I see it pretty often. But most of the time, if an "AMPutator" bot doesn't reply, someone usually mentions it and says to stop sharing AMP links and provides links to information about it.
It's good to see, but most people still aren't aware of it, and most of those people wouldn't care much. We all need to keep a lookout and always be ready to inform and teach others about it. It's good to have articles about how AMP is bad for everyone (except google) saved so we can quickly share them every time we see someone share an AMP link.
This should be default, or at least a switch, that if enabled, all links copied without tracking.
BTW i was thinking, isnt there a simple app or service, that does only this: listen for links in clipboard, if a link added, automatically removes tracking params, and replaces with that on clipboard?
So just a set of strings determined to be used for tracking among a set of hosts? It's not like I have a better solution, but I feel like making this anti-tracking method encourages more complex tracking params. At some point, I wouldn't be surprised to see randomly generated query parameter keys which are resolved server side, making this approach impossible.
Ublock can strip it from the URL automatically, though if the website checkw this it might block stuff :/
Would need some deeper integration to be able to separate the URL bar the Website sees and the one you see. (like the current separation of the DOM)
I think I’m against this. Not because it’s the wrong thing to do, but it’s just going to swing marketers & such to obscure their tracking URLs to something like /my-slug/hashed-uid-for-tracking-without-query-param/post & it maybe unsafe or impossible to replace that part of the URL is some cases (think how not all credit cards numbers work, it has a built-in algorithm). The corpos can do this already now but query params are easier & less fiddly. Despite the large number of add-ons that could combat this already (including a uBlock Origin filter list), there wasn’t enough incentive to start another ad/tracking arms race… but you introduce it as a default feature in a major (🤞) browser, & now the corpos take notice instead of being able to wave it off as something a minority of users are doing.
…And I say this as the guy that reminds $WORK chat poster to remove their tracking URLs for the privacy of the group
Nothing wrong with people making money if they are honest about their shilling and tell you upfront if they are affiliate links and they get a cut if you click on them, or that their product review is sponsored. One of my favorite yt channels is cheaprvliving and Bob will be straight and honest with you about that and I like that.
I do think its a little sleezy when creators don't be honest with you about them shilling and making money from affiliate links.
Nothing provided it is an honest and upfront with consent from the user. The problem is vast majority of affiliate links are non-consensual, buried in articles and in the worst case are the reason that pages even exist - "top ten dishwashers", "50 gifts to buy your wife for Christmas" etc. clickbait garbage. I doubt most visitors even understand that's why the pages exist or the financial remuneration they get from making these lists.
So it would not be a bad thing that if a browser to detect an affiliate link and ask you if you wanted to follow it as-is or strip the affiliate info out with a checkbox to remember the decision for the site.