I don’t think this is that big of a problem today, after so many privacy leaks people are a bit more aware, at least in my experience. Also tiktok actually shows a popup that the link contains information about your account.

Ya, most people get that there is no privacy. Where I think you get more of the "tinfoil hat" accusations is that a lot of people don't care or don't recognize the far reaching implications of lack of privacy.

In my experience most people do understand the basic structure of a URL even if they don't know the proper names for the parts. It doesn't take being a software developer to empirically figure out which parameters are responsible for tracking and delete them before sharing — especially if you see your own username in one of them.

Do “regular folk” really do this though? It is a serious, non provocative question. I strip all cruft off URLs but consider myself privacy aware and technically adept. I don’t think my non-technical friends have any idea about this.

Take a look at the URL you get when you try and share a tiktok video, and tell me which part to delete to remove the tracking

You have to visit it yourself to resolve it to a long link, then you'll get a long URL that has /@username-of-uploader/videos/[video id]?[huge amount of tracking variables]. For now, you're ok with dropping everything after the ? after you resolve out the vm.tiktok.com link shortener.