Replying to Avatar localist

Hi Matthew, the URL from a pasted Twitter/X link looks something like this:

xdotcom/philc411/status/1772703236778000488?s=51&t=bqU-DERO8RCyTR2vWjyt5E

You don’t need anything to the right of the question mark for the link to work, the s=blah and the t=blah are just tags that help X follow your activity around the interwebs and are for their benefit, not yours. They can be safely removed. Facebook and other socials do something similar. Hope that helps, cheers!
Avatar
Matthew Duffy 1y ago

So that's how they do it. Fascinating!

Thank you for the education!

Is it the same characters with other socials? A question mark and then the s= and t= tags?

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Avatar
localist 1y ago

Anything after the “?” is a parameter, and not part of the page URL itself.

In *most* cases this is unnecessary junk you can remove, in *some* cases it forms part of the request you might need to keep. It’s easy to experiment by just trying it in your browser URL bar. Some parameters have obvious names and purpose, most will not.

For example:

Twitter: s, t - both unnecessary trackers

Facebook: fbclid- unnecessary tracker

YouTube: v, t - these are the actual ids of the video with an optional timestamp, both potentially relevant for you

Short article on this: https://medium.com/@ian-darwin/you-are-sharing-urls-with-tracking-links-please-stop-502c6f54895

Avatar
Matthew Duffy 1y ago

Thanks for teaching me! And for the link for more info!

Avatar
Scott 1y ago

Sometimes, if I’m not sure, I will keep removing parts of the url and testing it in the browser until it doesn’t work. Then I add that part back and use the link that way.