[Noisebridge-discuss] t.co no! Bookmarklet

Garrett Smith dhtmlkitchen at gmail.com
Thu Jun 20 19:34:56 UTC 2013


On 6/19/13, pdbogen at cernu.us <pdbogen at cernu.us> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 03:09:10PM -0700, Garrett Smith wrote:
>> I've installed the t.co bookmarklet for Firefox on the community
>> machine (the computer that others can use).
>>
>> The purpose of the bookmarklet is to avoid Twitter tracking and to
>> speed up navigation.
>>
>> https://gist.github.com/GarrettS/2969301
>>
>> To "install" simple copy the shortened URL and paste it into the
>> bookmarklets bar. Visit Twitter.com and click the bookmarklet. It will
>> add some javascript to fix those t.co URLs to the real URLs.
>>
>> It will work on most browsers but not IE. I never bothered. THere is a
>> plugin for Opera and if anyone wants to help out, we can make one for
>> FIrefox.
>>
>> Rationale:
>> T.co is ostensibly to make Twitter safer. And that to me sounds like
>> something government would say -- we're tracking you to keep you safe!
>> It's for your own good, because we know best! And all the while
>> Twitter is boggled with simple problems caused by their incompetent
>> web developers, e.g. push the R or L arrow key on twitter.com to see
>> the js error and broken kbd scroll navigation. The fact that they use
>> Modernizr and jQuery (and I recall at one point they used two versions
>> of jQuery) says it all.
>
> Hmmm... install this script to keep you safe from those other guys. Sounds
> like something government would say.
>
With the obvious differences being
1) It's your choice to do it.
2) The code is open to be read by you.

> Anyway, yeah, there are analytics collected on t.co links, but they're not
> "tracking you." The main point is that all links that are tweeted pass
> through

There is also the USA PATRIOT act which is designed with provisions
where govt may ask a company for information and put a gag order on
them. This means that the company can't tell you if they've leaked
your info. Unless you've been living under a rock, there are many
examples of this actually happening.

to gather
> the t.co system and get scanned to block spam/malware, and you get
> shortening
> for free.
>
> Feel free to use his script, though. Seems harmless.
It is harmless unless used in IE, and in that case, the harm is you'll
get script errors. Then again, anyone can read it and see that. not
sure why you want to give your permission for this.
-- 
Garrett
Twitter: @xkit
personx.tumblr.com



More information about the Noisebridge-discuss mailing list