Nobody should be using URL shorteners in the first place.
Afaik, originally they solved the problem twitter has created: URLs were counted together with the tweet text - with overall limit of 140.
URL shorteners are but inherently bad. I find them useful. I self host them on domains I own. So they’re secure, trust worthy, I can track engagement, and I can update them if need be.
Plus, I’m pretty sure Twitter forces you to use their shortener. My URL http://gho.st was “shortened” to a longer https://t.co/blahblah URL 😂
I can track engagement, and I can update them if need be
That’s inherently bad as in:
- Third party (you) tracking the user
- Hiding the true target from the user
- Destroying any attempt at content archival
They’re not inherently bad “for you”, just for everyone else.
Third party (you) tracking the user
I’m not tracking users, I’m tracking engagement. I’m not Zuckerberg
Hiding the true target from the user
99.99% of website use a reverse proxy, the target is nearly always hidden. I don’t think you understand how the internet works.
Destroying any attempt at content archival
Who would archive a shortened URL and not follow the link to its target? It’s not my fault if people don’t know how to archive my content.
URL shorteners are not inherently bad.
I’m not tracking users, I’m tracking engagement
Whose engagement? Anything on your server, you can track it with the access logs, do you know how the internet works?
99.99% of website use a reverse proxy, the target is nearly always hidden. I don’t think you understand how the internet works.
Do you know how a reverse proxy works? It doesn’t change the user-facing URL like a shortener.
Who would archive a shortened URL and not follow the link to its target? It’s not my fault if people don’t know how to archive my content.
Someone archiving the original content. It’s your fault for breaking the link at a whim.
URL shorteners are inherently bad.
Whose engagement?
The engagement with my presentation for instance. I don’t care about tracking specific users.
It doesn’t change the user-facing URL like a shortener.
Where the user-facing URL points can easily be changed! For instance, changing the DNS record or changing where the reverse proxy points. I really don’t think you understand how the internet works under the hood.
Someone archiving the original content. It’s your fault for breaking the link at a whim.
I’m not going to optimize my content for lazy archivers. Check out web.archive.org for an example of how to properly archive, they update the URLs so links don’t break
Third party (you) tracking the user
No, he’s not a third party, he’s the second party in this context because you visit his own website, hosted on his own server.
On his own website, hosted on his own server, he has server logs to track whatever he wants, change whatever content he wants to display, and do whatever else he wants.
The only reason to use a URL shortener, is to interpose himself between his server and someone else’s server, meaning to become a third party to the relationship between user and other server.
I see zero reason why others would be entitled to archive your content, nor hiding the true target from the user. Those are not bad things.
Read up on Archive.org and “link rot”.
I know what that is, and I believe in the right to be forgotten.
The right to detach your (private) personal information from some content, doesn’t mean you should have the right for your content to be forgotten.
Yes you should…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
Privacy is a big reason why. Archiving is also a very common way to dox people. Not to mention, I just don’t want my shit to exist online indefinitely. I want my data to be forgotten. In what way is this bad. Hoarding everything indefinitely is bad.
I work for a college. We use our internal link shorteners to make sure a given link points at the latest version of a resource and measure engagement by seeing what is the best way to get important information to our students and faculty. (Did people actually click on that announcement in our LMS?)
They’re terribly useful for us.
You being able to track engagement is bad, actually.
This obviously depends on the context. For instance, I’m speaking at a public event and I put a link up on a presentation to my website. The website is running on my nginx server so I could already track every visit. Having a shortened URL helps me gauge the value of my talk. It’s not black and white
Real name and face on the internet guy doesn’t get to have an opinion on tracking.
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It’s like assuming someone doesn’t understand hygiene because they shit on the floor, so unreasonable.
I don’t believe in security by obscurity
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I self host them on domains I own.
I’ve been trying to get a short domain to do exactly that, do you know any good brokers?
No sorry, I was just lucky and persistent
Not the OP, but if all you need is a domain, namecheap.com is solid and very affordable.
You can do that already with something like cloudflare
Why is that? They can be useful - especially if you are including links in something like a print publication
Privacy: trackers, trackers, trackers Security: you can’t know where you would be taken with a short link. A legit website? A malicious website? Who knows.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ygrauer/2016/04/20/five-reasons-you-should-stop-shortening-urls/
- They are insecure with no way to know what the real URL is.
- If you don’t control it you can’t guarantee the link will always work (bad for print).
- Register a shorter domain or novelty domain for your print publication.
How are they useful?
Because then other people control the link. Imagine writing a long print article about a community coming together to care for an elderly holocaust survivor that includes a link for more info. And then Musk (or whomever has the control over the link shortener you use) comes along and decides the link in your article should point at a holocaust denialism site instead. You can’t change the link that’s now printed on paper, but they can change what it points at.
Or the shortened web site shuts down and all that history is lost. Happened to, I believe, the Guardian newspapers shortening service.
@HeartyBeast @trashhalo @hypelightfly Maybe it’s a good idea to include the original URL too. In case the link shortener goes offline or something else happens to it.
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Posting for no reason in particular.
https://github.com/theAlinP/twitter-link-deobfuscator
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-link-deobfuscator/
I gotta say though, in my journey to find other ways to access information rather than using the big names, I often find delays and small frustrations to get where I need to go.
Every time I ask myself if it’s worth it to not give data or money to these sites; whether it’s more important to make sure I’m directing my attention and financial support to other people and other companies? And I take a breath and endure b/c it’s the only power I have in all this.
Is 5 seconds worth it? For me it is.
Commenting here to test something. Please disregard.
You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not even my real Dad!
