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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Technology
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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 😂
That's inherently bad as in:
They're not inherently bad "for you", just for everyone else.
I'm not tracking users, I'm tracking engagement. I'm not Zuckerberg
99.99% of website use a reverse proxy, the target is nearly always hidden. I don't think you understand how the internet works.
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.
Whose engagement? Anything on your server, you can track it with the access logs, do you know how the internet works?
Do you know how a reverse proxy works? It doesn't change the user-facing URL like a shortener.
Someone archiving the original content. It's your fault for breaking the link at a whim.
URL shorteners are inherently bad.
The engagement with my presentation for instance. I don't care about tracking specific users.
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.
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
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten#Criticism
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.
I mean, I don’t do that but why the hate? You’re assuming someone doesn’t understand privacy based solely on the fact they’re willing to publicly show their face/name online.
I don't believe in security by obscurity
Yeah false equivalencies don’t exist /s
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/
It doesnt matter how short a link is on paper, I am probably not going to take the time to type the whole damn thing on a shitty phone keyboard.
QR codes aren't great either, but I would prefer those in a print publication than a shortened URL. Just give me the full URL in a QR code thanks.
How about a QR code that takes you to a shortened link
Agree 100% but QR codes with long strings are a problem too.
I have the maximum allowed WiFi password (63 characters?) on my network and it’s all randomly generated. I have a giant QR code on a sheet of paper but even that is difficult to scan.
That sounds like a pain - surely there's a shorter length that's still strong enough that it can't be cracked in a trillion years?
It’s really not much of a pain. All our Apple devices sync WiFi passwords and if we have a guest we can usually share it when they go to their WiFi settings.
The only time it’s been a pain is while connecting Oculus Quest devices because they give you zero ways of copying it from another device. No QR code recognition while you’ve got multiple cameras strapped to your face? Super annoying.
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.
I’ve had to block most of them because they’re used in scam/phishing emails all the time.
I think Twitter might do it to standardize the number of characters a link takes up in a tweet? 23 characters IIRC
Mastodon manages to do it without a shortener, so I don't believe that's the answer.
That used to be the case, don't think it is anymore. I don't remember though, I ditched that shit hole.