- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Everything must enshittify.
Have link shorteners ever not been shitty? It obfuscates a link for the sake of making things look pretty for people who can’t format text
IIRC, they originally became popular because they saved characters for microblogs like Twitter. They’ve outlasted their usefulness though.
I think some used them to gain insight in clicks (bit.ly provided stats for numbers, user agents etc.), and to track the origin of clicks by generating a unique shortened URL for each linking post.
Also, the obvious use case of turning a long direct URL to a file into something people can actually be bothered to manually copy from paper…
Link shorteners have absolutely been useful when you need to go to a long URL on a entirely different device you can’t copy a link to easily.
I’ve used them to make it easy to get to scripts.
QR codes mostly solved that.
Shortening the URL makes it possible to have significantly lower resolution QR codes, which is almost always more useful. Able to be rendered on more mediums, able to be read with lower quality readers.
Not when you are working in a CLI
Service-specific link shorteners are alright, like
youtu.be,a.coandgoo.gl/maps. At least know roughly where you’re going.For anything else, I rather see the full URLs, and if I need to share a link on a paper medium, I also make it available in a QRcode form.
When it comes to email I just have my server reject any containing links that point to URL shorteners. I’m not stupid enough to click them anyway but it’s safe to assume you’re just a scammer or some other lowlife, even if you’re otherwise considered a reputable business.
Laughs in Ublock Origin
Shocking. That’s what we get for expecting companies to be benevolent stewards of the internet. They tricked us for a decade and a half but the sheep’s clothing are coming off.
I haven’t seen a Bitly link in dog’s years and assumed it had died.
Host your own URL shortener with Yourls. It’s great, loads of useful plugins too. (dot)ink domains are cheap so you can have fun with namel.ink like I did.
Or just don’t shorten links? Shortening them just makes linkrot much more likely and also obfuscates where theyre going
Their original purpose was when twitter had limits on how many characters you could use no?
Yeah but that’s not a thing anymore so we should stop using them
I’ve had these losers DNS blocked for years. Don’t respond to abuse reports? Get
NXDOMAIN’d.
