The hypocrisy has always been the point.

The existence of a class of people who should have the right to defend themselves and a class of people who should not has always been the point.

And anyone, literally anyone, can become a part of the class who should not have that right: anyone who becomes a threat to the status quo, to those in power, loses the right to arm themselves. And driving a car, being in a car at all is considered arming yourself. Being near a “weapon” is arming yourself and makes you prone to extermination.

That has always been the point. Good people can arm themselves and any violence they commit is self defense. Anyone else is a violent person who needs to be put down.

So, companies are tracking you no matter what you do, but this specifically is something I care about deeply.

Essentially, when you share a link, sometimes it has extra data that tracks where it comes from and goes.

Opening Spotify, clicking the first item, and using the share button, I get something like open.spotify.com/track/4P0f1HTaA2UwtLJGryNgJZ?si=DBvbfihOSweU1KHj9Mib8w

That ?si=...........…. is the tracker. It tells Spotify who clicks on the link and ties it to you, meaning Spotify knows who your friends are even if you never follow them.

Similarly, if on Amazon or EBay in the browser, I get something like www.ebay.com/itm/146493392451?_skw=lenovo&itmmeta=............&hash=item................&itmprp=enc..............

And, similarly, everything after the question mark is tracking you. I had to blank it out because it was so long!

There is an exception for a few things (I.E. the v=..... on YouTube, but not the si=..... on YouTube)

The general rule is delete everything after the ? and if it breaks, add something back.