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.

  • TWeaK@lemm.eeOPEnglish
    3·
    7 hours ago

    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 a v= suffix to denote the video itself, but everything else isn’t needed.