@julian @damagecontrolblog @thisismissem do you mean rel=nofollow https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links?#nofollow ?
This is separate from noreferrer, but can be combined.

@Edent while I think you have no bad intentions, I'm not buying publishers claiming they need this kind of tracking:

Domain or even full path for each incoming click.
Unique returning user and click paths on the website.

One can create content without tailoring it to every niche community that is consuming it on their own terms.
One can even create content without being let in on every conversation about it.

I highly doubt one truly needs to tailor to every single Mastodon / Fediverse server.

@Edent whole point of decline of referrer header is to improve privacy.
You have no right to know the origin of every link to your content.

If the origin wants to interact with your content, you can provide a comment section on your website, webmentions etc. and maybe they will tell you.

If you want to track links to their origin, use unique tracking links; link shorteners, UTM parameters etc.
You will notice that folks unshorten and remove those or outright will refuse to interact with them.

@Edent your Fediverse post/preview here says
> [..] self-attest using Domain Verification0.

Curious if that was something specific like ACME's DNS-01 challenge I've clicked and read your blog, but the "0" is just a numbered footnote

Another non-technical issue with domain validation is that it's easy to get wrong as a human, as you've said, and that e.g. Google is trying to remove URLs from their browser UI, so it is even less accessible to laymen for manual inspection. Search engine as DNS.