[theturtletalks]

Google Maps share button is filled with tracking too, now I just copy the address and send it.

I fear it’s all futile because even if we are privacy focused, if our friends and families are sharing links like this, Google knows how all of us are connected to each other in the real world.

[hogwasher]

You can copy a shared link and use the browser url bar to open it in a private window, or delete the extra crap at the end of the url (anything after the ? in a lot of cases).

Granted, that doesn't help for the service you're using to communicate with people (phone provider, real time chat service, email provider, whatever) and/or store your contacts. Especially if you're talking to someone who, say, hasn't turned all the creepy Gemini stuff off in their Google account and it's scanning all their emails and learning the names and emails of everyone they talk to.

Or any app that has location permission and can detect that you're in the same place as someone else.

I'd think they can probably figure it out by time too, after enough shared videos. Like, see that when x account opens a video, then y account also opens that same video within such-and-such an amount of time, or vice versa.

[dredmorbius]

There are tools which will strip tracking tags on copy. Firefox includes this, currently "Copy clean link" on the left-click context menu.

What are needed are tools which will discard any tracking automatically on receipt, whether that's email, messaging clients, operating systems (e.g., Android alternatives, iOS ... I have suspicions Android itself won't willingly implement this unless forced by lawsuit or regulation), and/or browsers. It would also be nice to see sharing / social sites and platforms drop this crap as well. The commercially-oriented, advertising-supported ones likely won't (willingly, as per Android above), but I could see Mastodon or other federated noncommercial systems adopting this approach and cleaning submitted links by default.