Right, but nothing prevents YouTube to get rid of public video IDs and simply share an opaque version of (user, video) whenever possible.
It'd be awful, but Google nowadays is willing to do shitty stuff like this and atrocious stuff like engage with the military too (because obviously the only flaw of project maven was being discovered)
It's not just a tracking tag on Reddit; the shared links largely obfuscate the thread or comment, requiring one to go through the tracking link to find out what is behind it. An example for anyone curious:
Another pattern that I hate is that Reddit will create an account for you if you are using a browser profile that does not have an associated Reddit account. It will then prompt you to 'personalise' the username and password.
It'd be awful, but Google nowadays is willing to do shitty stuff like this and atrocious stuff like engage with the military too (because obviously the only flaw of project maven was being discovered)