ISFDB Bibliographic Tools / Feature Requests / #1207 Ignore Facebook tracking IDs

Ahasuerus - 2018-11-01

status: open --> wont-fix

assigned_to: Ahasuerus
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Ahasuerus - 2018-11-01

Further investigation determined that this cannot be easily implemented. Here is the explanation which was posted on the Community Portal:

After experimenting with this issue, I realized that this is a fairly big can of worms. As Wikipedia explains, most URL queries look like http://example.com/path/to/page?name=ferret&color=purple . Facebook assumes that all Web sites use this format and appends another parameter, "fbclid", to each external URL. They figure that another parameter shouldn't prevent third party Web sites from parsing the rest of them correctly.

However, that's not how most of our Web pages (searches are an exception) work. Our URLs look like http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2456027 , http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?689416 and so on. Note that there is no equal sign in these URLs. If we need to pass an additional parameter, we use the "+" sign, e.g. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?689416+c .

What this means is that our URLs are incompatible with what the Facebook software expects. It may be possible to beef up our parsing algorithms to extract IDs from the hybrid URLs that Facebook uses, but it's a pretty big deal. For starters, every ISFDB page does its own parameter parsing, so we would first need to centralize the parameter parsing process, which would literally affect every Web page that we have.

Hopefully Facebook will realize that not every Web site uses the URL format that they expect and stop appending "fbclid" to incompatible URLs. Ahasuerus 21:33, 26 October 2018 (EDT)

Last edit: Ahasuerus 2019-05-16

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Description has changed:

Diff:

--- old
+++ new
@@ -3,3 +3,15 @@
 If someone posts a link to one of our listings on ISFDB, Facebook now appends a really long Facebook Click ID to the URL ([http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?58089&amp;fbclid=IwAR3ZJ5Dk_vnwXay_e9dwGLjcfkLPaG4XOB9vG4GPmLesJA0rlLiM7-QrEyg example]).

 We need to update the software to strip the &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; and the ID from the URL.
+
+2021-06-14 edit:
+
+Re-opening the FR as per the following Community Portal post:
+
+                         Here is what I think is going on. When you have a Facebook account, Facebook stores certain information within your browser using &#34;cookies&#34;. If you go to another Web site and that site is a Facebook associate (with Facebook-provided software installed), that site&#39;s software will retrieve and leverage the data in the Facebook-originated cookies. 
+
+                        So far so good since none of it affects what we do here -- we are not a Facebook associate and don&#39;t run any Facebook-developed software. However, at some point ca. 2017-2018 some browsers (Safari?) started limiting the use of third-party cookies in a more aggressive way, which affected Facebook&#39;s ability to send data to Facebook associates. To get around the issue, Facebook developers started adding &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; to the end of external URLs. Everything after the equal sign was Facebook-specific data duplicating a part of what Facebook puts in your cookies. 
+
+                        Of course, if you don&#39;t have a Facebook account, there is nothing for Facebook to send to its associates, so their software doesn&#39;t add &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; to the end of external URLs. Hence the difference between what I see and what you see. 
+
+                        I am currently working on centralizing the way ISFDB URLs are handled and I may have a way to strip &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; from URLs in the foreseeable future. Stay tuned...

status: wont-fix --> open

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Description has changed:

Diff:

--- old
+++ new
@@ -8,10 +8,10 @@

 Re-opening the FR as per the following Community Portal post:

-                         Here is what I think is going on. When you have a Facebook account, Facebook stores certain information within your browser using &#34;cookies&#34;. If you go to another Web site and that site is a Facebook associate (with Facebook-provided software installed), that site&#39;s software will retrieve and leverage the data in the Facebook-originated cookies. 
+Here is what I think is going on. When you have a Facebook account, Facebook stores certain information within your browser using &#34;cookies&#34;. If you go to another Web site and that site is a Facebook associate (with Facebook-provided software installed), that site&#39;s software will retrieve and leverage the data in the Facebook-originated cookies. 

-                        So far so good since none of it affects what we do here -- we are not a Facebook associate and don&#39;t run any Facebook-developed software. However, at some point ca. 2017-2018 some browsers (Safari?) started limiting the use of third-party cookies in a more aggressive way, which affected Facebook&#39;s ability to send data to Facebook associates. To get around the issue, Facebook developers started adding &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; to the end of external URLs. Everything after the equal sign was Facebook-specific data duplicating a part of what Facebook puts in your cookies. 
+So far so good since none of it affects what we do here -- we are not a Facebook associate and don&#39;t run any Facebook-developed software. However, at some point ca. 2017-2018 some browsers (Safari?) started limiting the use of third-party cookies in a more aggressive way, which affected Facebook&#39;s ability to send data to Facebook associates. To get around the issue, Facebook developers started adding &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; to the end of external URLs. Everything after the equal sign was Facebook-specific data duplicating a part of what Facebook puts in your cookies. 

-                        Of course, if you don&#39;t have a Facebook account, there is nothing for Facebook to send to its associates, so their software doesn&#39;t add &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; to the end of external URLs. Hence the difference between what I see and what you see. 
+Of course, if you don&#39;t have a Facebook account, there is nothing for Facebook to send to its associates, so their software doesn&#39;t add &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; to the end of external URLs. Hence the difference between what I see and what you see. 

-                        I am currently working on centralizing the way ISFDB URLs are handled and I may have a way to strip &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; from URLs in the foreseeable future. Stay tuned... 
+I am currently working on centralizing the way ISFDB URLs are handled and I may have a way to strip &#34;&amp;fbclid=&#34; from URLs in the foreseeable future. Stay tuned...

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-15

Formatting fixes.

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-15

Part 1 implemented in:

biblio/publisher_authors.py common/isfdb.py

Installed in SVN 630 on 2021-06-15. Keeping the FR open.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-15

Part 2:

biblio/publisher.py biblio/publisheryear.py common/isfdb.py mod/isfdblib.py

Installed in SVN 631 on 2021-06-15. Keeping the FR open.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-15

Part 3:

biblio/publisher_history.py biblio/pubs_not_in_series.py biblio/pubseries.py biblio/pubseries_history.py

Installed in SVN 632 on 2021-06-15. Keeping the FR open.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-16

Part 4:

biblio/author_history.py biblio/award_category_history.py biblio/award_history.py biblio/awardtype_history.py biblio/pub_history.py biblio/series_history.py biblio/title_history.py

Installed in SVN 633 on 2021-06-15. Keeping the FR open.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-16

Part 5:

biblio/authortags.py biblio/tag.py biblio/tag_author.py biblio/title.py biblio/titlecovers.py biblio/usertag.py biblio/usertitles.py

Installed in SVN 634 on 2021-06-16. Keeping the FR open.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-16

Part 6 - Verification and Recent Activity pages :

biblio/changed_verified_pubs.py biblio/my_removed_secondary_verifications.py biblio/my_secondary_verifications.py biblio/myrecent.py biblio/recent.py biblio/recent_primary_ver.py biblio/recentver.py biblio/removed_secondary_verifications.py biblio/userver.py

Installed in SVN 635 on 2021-06-16. Keeping the FR open.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-16

Part 7 - Stats:

biblio/authors_by_debut_year.py biblio/most_popular.py biblio/most_popular_table.py biblio/most_reviewed.py biblio/popular_authors.py biblio/popular_authors_table.py biblio/stats.py biblio/topcontrib.py

Installed in SVN 638 on 2021-06-16.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-17

Part 8 - Awards:

biblio/award_category.py biblio/award_category_year.py biblio/award_details.py biblio/awardtype.py

Installed in SVN 640 on 2021-06-16.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-17

Part 9 - Series and submissions:

biblio/author_history.py
* biblio/cancelsubmission.py
* biblio/dumpxml.py
* biblio/pe.py
* biblio/seriesgrid.py
* biblio/seriestags.py
* biblio/view_submission.py
* common/isfdb.py

Installed in SVN 641 on 2021-06-17.

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-17

Part 10 - Award Year. Implemented in biblio/ay.py, installed in SVN 642 on 2021-06-17.

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-17

Part 11 - Series fix. Implemented in biblio/pe.py, installed in SVN 643 on 2021-06-17.

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-18

Part 12 - Nightly reports fix. Implemented in common/isfdb.py, installed in SVN 644 on 2021-06-18.

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-18

Part 13 - My Votes and Forthcoming Books:

biblio/fc.py biblio/myvotes.py common/isfdb.py

Installed in SVN 645 on 2021-06-18.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-18

Part 14 - Notes and calendar:

biblio/calendarClass.py biblio/note.py

Installed in SVN 646 on 2021-06-18.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-18

Part 15 - Remaining Bibliographic pages:

biblio/advSearchClass.py biblio/biblio.py biblio/diffselect.py biblio/directory.py biblio/dologin.py biblio/pe.py biblio/pl.py biblio/seriesgrid.py common/isfdb.py

Installed in SVN 647 on 2021-06-18. Keeping the FR open.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-18

Part 16 - General CGI parsing improvements. Implemented in common/isfdb.py, installed in SVN 648 on 2021-06-18.

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-19

Part 17 - Edit Award Type:

common/isfdb.py edit/editawardtype.py

Installed in SVN 649 on 2021-06-18.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-19

Part 18 - Fixed the nightly job; upgraded Verifications and Votes:

common/isfdb.py edit/verify.py edit/vote.py

Installed in SVN 650 on 2021-06-19.
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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-19

Part 19 - Title Unmerge. Implemented in edit/tv_unmerge.py, installed in SVN 651 on 2021-06-19.

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Ahasuerus - 2021-06-19

Part 20 - Remove Titles and Select Award Type:

edit/rmtitles.py edit/select_award_type.py

Installed in SVN 653 on 2021-06-19.
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Ignore Facebook tracking IDs

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#1207 Ignore Facebook tracking IDs

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