If you’re like me then you are the “link spreader” within your social circles i.e. the one guy that is always pasting random links in the group chat that point members to different places on the vast world wide web. The problem with being such a person is that you need to look after the kind of links you’re posting. Let’s not even discuss the content that those links redirect to.
For yours truly, my obsession is finding daily deals on Amazon, the PlayStation store and other e-commerce platforms and sharing the good news. The only problem with this is that more often, I’ve come across the deal in question somewhere else. Like Twitter, or Reddit or Thrifter. On each of those platforms, chances are that the person from whom I am clicking the link from and also sharing with my circles has other intentions beyond just being generous on the web: to make money.
The book we all read in primary school and got inspired is available for just $1 today [Kindle edition]. Yeah, the author pissed me off in 2016 during the election campaigns but the book is still a good read, more so for the young ones. https://t.co/7puSdmfvMX
— permanent irrefutable public user (@echenze) February 19, 2018
How? Affiliate marketing i.e. having some special trackers embedded in the links so that they follow users across the web so that in the event of a purchase, the initiator is rewarded among other intentions. That’s not really a big problem until you have to specifically curate each and every link you intend to share, stripping it off all the extra 200 characters that you don’t need and eventually sending it in its lean format. That takes quite a bit of time and it’s, to be honest, unnecessarily tasking.
What if the web browser I (and many others who do the same) use could just intervene on my behalf and handle things at the browser level?
Good idea, says Chrome 64, the latest version of the popular browser on the Android platform and elsewhere.
According to reports, turns out, Chrome now sorts out messier links when a user copies them directly from the Chrome search and address bar or uses the universal share button to share the link.
The other good thing is that as this stripping off of additional unnecessary information usually contained in long links continues, the referral information that many may be worried about, is not affected.
The downside, however, is that it now becomes harder to redirect users to a specific page on a website.
Chrome version 64 is the same one that asked for “a stronger pop-up blocker that prevents sites with abusive experiences from opening new tabs or windows. These include third-party websites disguised as play buttons, other site controls, or even transparent overlays on websites that capture all clicks.”
Long live Chrome.
