• gelberhut@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      Afaik, originally they solved the problem twitter has created: URLs were counted together with the tweet text - with overall limit of 140.

    • Greg Clarke@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      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 😂

      • jarfil@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Greg Clarke@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • jarfil@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Greg Clarke@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              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

        • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • jarfil@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            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.

        • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • deepthaw@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • mom@discuss.tchncs.de
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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?

    • HeartyBeast@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Why is that? They can be useful - especially if you are including links in something like a print publication

      • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • hypelightfly@kbin.social
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        1 year ago
        1. They are insecure with no way to know what the real URL is.
        2. If you don’t control it you can’t guarantee the link will always work (bad for print).
        3. Register a shorter domain or novelty domain for your print publication.

        How are they useful?

      • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • wagoner@infosec.pub
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          1 year ago

          Or the shortened web site shuts down and all that history is lost. Happened to, I believe, the Guardian newspapers shortening service.

    • atocci@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think Twitter might do it to standardize the number of characters a link takes up in a tweet? 23 characters IIRC

  • PenguinCoder@beehaw.org
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    Eh I don’t think it’s malicious in nature but can’t prove it either is or isn’t. They might be doing more analysis on some outbound links or users for something or just A/B testing some additional methods for gathering more data. Unsure. But I wouldn’t immediately jump to intentional.

  • Talaraine@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.