Tracking. The links themselves will likely have unique referrer IDs so the platform knows where a click comes from.
Also, they track website visitors without them even clicking the button. Just loading the “share” icon from the social media website allows them to see that you are reading that specific article, and if they recognise your IP or can fingerprint your browser then they can tie it to your social media account (advertising profile).
Just loading the “share” icon from the social media website allows them to see that you are reading that specific article
The buttons aren’t necessary for this though. They can do that with a <script> tag, or a hidden 1x1 pixel <img>
Yes, but Facebook can’t just place that script on other people’s pages.
That’s the point of the buttons. Website designers place that shit themselves.
The buttons don’t do any tracking just from existing. They only exist to encourage a miniscule number of people to repost your content on social media, and in the event a share comes from that, they may include affiliate info
All the useful information comes from the tracking scripts, which developers are also placing themselves because they are infinitely more useful. They tell you where visitors are coming from, how/if they are converting, everything they are viewing/interacting with on your site, and what the ROI of your ad spend is. In addition to telling you if someone clicked the share button.
Tracking pixels have been decoupled from the “share” buttons for at least 10-15 years
I hear you say that. But umatrix consistently show facebook twitter google and friends failing to load on the majority of pages i visit. Is that something else?
It’s Google analytics, and the meta/twitter/etc tracking pixels. Almost every site uses them because they provide useful data to the site owner and they are free.
the images in OPs post appear to be designed to match their site theme, meaning umatrix wouldn’t even block them, because they are being served from the sites actual domain/CDN and not from Facebook/Google’s tracking domain.
That’s not really a thing anymore since the GDPR went into force. These days, websites integrate these buttons directly into the webpage rather than loading them dynamically. The buttons in the screenshot are custom designs, too, so they didn’t get loaded from the social media companies.
I use a combination of things like Librewolf, uBlock Origin, and Pihole w/ maintained adlists. I wonder if any or all of that blocks this type of tracking. I know Librewolf has pretty good fingerprinting protections.
Yes I’ve run that. It gives a lot of metrics. But I’m specifically wondering which one applies to the example given by the person I replied to.
This ^^
On mobile, I recommend downloading a URL cleaner to scrape away that shit.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people share an article and the link is the size of the Magna Carta
Firefox has that built in thank goodness.
It’s also to remind people to post them in social media, clicking them or not.
Tracking is the game
Aren’t these buttons still around just to track you even if you don’t interact with them? Since most people don’t logout from their social media on their personal device.
Users don’t need to interact with them, when a site adds the button to their page it allows that code to track you around the net. It’s still generating revenue even if you never click on it.
Sites still add them because it makes them money at the expense of your privacy.
Yeah, but you can do the same tracking without actually displaying any buttons, so the point stands.
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No
Yes, you can do tracking without displaying any buttons, I don’t know what to tell you.
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Yeah, and all I said is you can do tracking without them, as you confirmed, so I don’t know what you are disagreeing with.
Ever heard about tracking pixel?
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Careful. Canvas is way more than a tracking pixel.
Sites still add them because it makes them money at the expense of your privacy.
You can also consider it a form of advertising for the platforms. The buttons not only suggest for the user that they should use an indicated platform, but give them an immediate way to engage with it as well. It’s manipulation, all the way down.
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I still want to know why they show up on porn sites…
Cause I’m sitting here watching backdoor sluts 9 and thinking to myself; “you know who’d really enjoy this? Grandma.”
Backdoor Sluts 9? that movie makes Crotch Capers 3 look like Naughty Nurses 2
Grandma was very clear at the last family gathering, that she sees all parts after 3 as very derivative and boring cashgrabs
I also recently had a porn site ask me, if I’d like to login with a Google account. Absolutely fuck that Google login dialog on any webpage that has it, but why in the world would anyone log into a porn site with it?
🤷 Sometimes you need a recipe for muffins, other times you need ‘instructional videos’ on muff diving. Google is here to help, lmao
To comment on the video of course
Gotta let her know people are stealing her content
Those are there so republican senators can accidentally tell on themselves.
You’d be surprised how the average person interacts with the Internet .
Share button > copy link > paste unedited url to SMS
I think you wrote FAX wrong.
Can someone pdf it tho first? I need pdf.
Missed a step where they Google Facebook.com - click on the top sponsored link to go to Facebook - post the URL
Or just send a link to a Google search result page, which ends up being a paragraph of URL
The horror:
https://xkcd.com/763/Just Sms a photo of the link.
In uBlock Origin activate the filterlist EasyList – Social Widgets to remove those.
I love how pornhub has a share button.
I always wonder how many people accidentally shared it to facebook or something. I know the vast majority of people keep all of their social media auto-logged and and linked to each other and shit. And they’re using Chrome.
As far as I can tell they are easy to add and everyone else is doing it, so the people who make decisions about the website don’t want to feel left out. Kind of like how those sites became popular in the first place, easy and perceived popularity.
It’s just an option on many WordPress templates - asks for your social URLs but I don’t know if any tracking happens natively as a result.
I don’t. Fuck each and everyone of those spy balls.
Share buttons are fucking useless IMO. You have to jump through a dozen screens to actually share them, or just copy the link and paste it where you want shared.
They aren’t useless at all, just not in the sense you expect. Those icons are hosted on the respective website and therefore serve as a giant tracking pixel. Better block them altogether.
YouTube is useful with the timestamp option
Pause the video, right click video and you can copy from time stamp.
So am I the only one for whom time stamps don’t work anymore? Every time I post a YouTube video with a specific time stamp, the video always starts at the beginning 🫤 Time stamps used to work fine for me until a couple years ago, time stamps hate me now.
I use the share by email button all the time because it is 2 clicks easier than copying and pasting the url.
Well I sure as hell don’t use that one.
I don’t think I’ve ever noticed those lol.
Who needs adblock when you’re just oblivious
Who needs adblock when you’re just oblivious
People who are oblivious as they browse are some of those who need it most. As they easily fall for “promoted content” that is literally just ads.
Yeah ive fallen for those a few times on tik tok and the like
yes. I see their utm’s all the time
How about their pmq’s or dgl’s? I bet you don’t ever see their btr’s
what are those lol
I was saying in a joke way that no one outside of your field will know what you’re talking about when you say “utm”. And even a couple of web searches didn’t explain it. Thanks for the link
I don’t do ts either. I just often saw them in URL parameters and searched up UTMs a few years ago and found stuff lol
Hah you gotta be trolling me this time
naw
Sooo, what does ts mean? When speaking to a general audience it’s best not to use industry specific initialisms if you want to be understood
Alright, I’ll admit it, I don’t get it. What are the icons supposed to say?
Laid out like that: FuckIng Cross the mail bot
Is that the follow up to Rock the Shazbot?
