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I thought HN automatically de-duped articles.

Almost. HN only does exact matching, so if the duplicate article varies even slightly, it would not be detected. Variations include query params at the end of a URL such as &utm_medium=...

An automatically detected article will upvote the original article.

It should be noted that moderators are well aware of this loophole, and upon repeated abuse will ban accounts. If you're just submitting what you see, don't worry. If you're submitting your articles over and over again, though, well, don't do that.

Anyone else habitually clean off &utm_* query strings before sharing a link anywhere? Feels so dirty leaving them on.

Do you mean removing referral links from legit links? Yep. No reason to give them even more information than they already get from the visit.

I usually clean links of superfluous query parameters before sharing them.

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