18 hours ago
- The author, a hobbyist web developer, learned web development by studying others and sometimes adopted suboptimal habits.
- He created Wander Console, a decentralized tool for recommending web pages, which uses no server-side logic.
- Despite initial reluctance, he added a `via=` query string to URLs for referral tracking due to user demand and fatigue from research.
- Adding query strings broke some URLs because the new URL could point to a different resource or return a 404 error.
- Web browsers already have a referral mechanism via the Referer header and Referrer-Policy; appending query strings bypasses these controls.
- The author argues that modifying a URL on behalf of a user to insert tracking information is morally wrong.
- He removed the feature and committed to never adding query strings to URLs in the future.