alt Hacker NewsThe tone of this and Chris's post gives me the impression that it's harmful to include these query parameters, but I don't understand how. Could someone elucidate me? I understand it can mangle some URLs and that's good enough reason not do it, but even then it seems like a minor incovenience.
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You can read some of the issues people have had with this by reading up on the http referer header: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer
There are a lot of reasons I might not want a site to know where I came from to get to their site. It is basically sharing your browsing history with the site you are visiting.
Because of this, there have been a lot of updates to the http referer header, with restrictions on when it is sent, and an ability to opt out of the feature entirely.
Adding a url parameter with the same information bypasses any of these existing rules and ability to opt out. They should just use the standard.
There is no reason at all.
You could simply throw the information away.
It's a ridiculously extreme stance and lacks proper explanation how this will lead to a better web.
What's interesting is that none of these sites have a "search" feature. Which is an important accessibility feature and a clear and legitimate use case for a query string.
Oh, I have a couple - the users did not agree on being tracked (these query params are tracking information), and the site administrator does not want incoming traffic to be tracked. I know the latter can be hard to understand, but I for example sure as hell do not want to have any info in my logs that can be used to harm my users.
On a more personal note, I hate it when I go to copy a link to send via a message, and the tracking code glued onto it is twice as long as original URL... I either have to fiddle around with it to clean it up or leave the person I sent it to to wonder wtf am I on about with a screenful of random characters...
So it's violating users' privacy, it's shit UX, and on top of that, nobody asked for it...
Three angles:
The technical purist: you’re modifying a URL in a way that, while in line with accepted custom, is technically incorrect. URLs should (the least effective type of should) basically be treated as opaque.
Social: it’s tracking stuff, sibling comment trees are good, I won’t reiterate.
Clutter: it’s getting in the way of the bit you should care about, and contributing to normal people no longer caring about URLs because they’re too hard, too complex.