• 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.

        • 👁️👄👁️@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.

        • Greg Clarke@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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

      • mom@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        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