This is funny, because I recently descided to try Pocket, owned by Mozilla, and it adds

>?utm_source=pocket_saves

to all saved links.

I never understood that feature and just hide it. We already have bookmarks right?

you mean Pocket? I was wondering how well the search there works. Turns out it is possible to search the pages themselves, but only with paid subscription. In the free version it only searches the titles and urls, like the Bookmarks.

I have mixed feelings, that's the same as edge that enabled dnt header by default killed dnt.

Same goes for utm parameter, because of this removal it's just getting more hidden instead some standard parameter that are easily guessable.

This will probably kill the utm_source as a standard. Companies that want this will blob encode all the fields or rename when generating links and remap back on their reverse proxies.

As seen in the Brave browser for over half a year:

https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/9982188779405-Wh...

with mixed results early on:

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/26013

Looks like Safari in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma will also added tracking removal for copied URLs. According to this article it will only do so in private mode tho. (Why not always?)

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/17/safari-link-tracking-pr...

And still not a "copy link text" function (unless you faff about installing an extension).

This is going to lead to so much tiktokificafion of links where it ties it back to the original user.

Although, honestly I don’t think there’s a lot of social media left where this would be a problem.

A bit too late isn't it?

Preventing such stripping as a website operator would be trivial. Just sign the combined URL and tracking parameters and refuse to serve the unauthenticated version. This is very well understood technology with a barely novel application.

(Please cite this comment as prior art!)

From what I heard, Facebook already does this, and it was supposedly introduced as a response to a similar anti-tracking measure by Mozilla. Not by signing the URL, but by encrypting everything into an opaque blob.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32117541

Cache the content by retrieving it and serve the cached version to clients?

Fairly certain facebook do this