This is a pretty standard Google Analytics Tracking URL [1] - setting aside the Googleness of it (which raises a different set of issues) I look at it like the modern equivalent of an Apache Access Log.
Also, not sure if this will make you feel better, but most places that are doing this type of in-depth analytics, etc. are much more often trying to bend themselves to your will ("what feature, benefit or product that people will get value out of") than to trick you into liking something you otherwise wouldn't.
One way of interpreting that query string is as the answer to an implicit survey question of "How would you like to get the stories we write?" the answer in this case being: "Twitter" [2].
Incidentally, this is why I recommend rewriting URLs to hide UTM strings on load: http://esd.io/blog/stripping-utm-strings.html This way they 1) look cleaner to the user (of a modern browser) and 2) if they are reshared it doens't come with a inaccurate tracking code.
Also, not sure if this will make you feel better, but most places that are doing this type of in-depth analytics, etc. are much more often trying to bend themselves to your will ("what feature, benefit or product that people will get value out of") than to trick you into liking something you otherwise wouldn't.
One way of interpreting that query string is as the answer to an implicit survey question of "How would you like to get the stories we write?" the answer in this case being: "Twitter" [2].
1 - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en 2 - Obviously in this case it's pretty well statistically messed up by that link being posted to HN, but you get the point