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In my experience most people do understand the basic structure of a URL even if they don't know the proper names for the parts. It doesn't take being a software developer to empirically figure out which parameters are responsible for tracking and delete them before sharing — especially if you see your own username in one of them.

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Do “regular folk” really do this though? It is a serious, non provocative question. I strip all cruft off URLs but consider myself privacy aware and technically adept. I don’t think my non-technical friends have any idea about this.

Take a look at the URL you get when you try and share a tiktok video, and tell me which part to delete to remove the tracking

You have to visit it yourself to resolve it to a long link, then you'll get a long URL that has /@username-of-uploader/videos/[video id]?[huge amount of tracking variables]. For now, you're ok with dropping everything after the ? after you resolve out the vm.tiktok.com link shortener.

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