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Enshittification is coming:
Beginning in the next month, when users click Bitly links or QR Codes, they may see a preview page prior to being directed to the destination URL. The page includes information about the link destination and may include advertising.
Short links are bullshit anyway. Don’t obfuscate where you’re sending me, that’s sketch. That’s phishing email behavior. Just because you don’t want me to erase all the tracking bullshit from url. Soon I won’t be able to anyway because most sites are starting to embed it into the url anyway. Fuck you and fuck the internet
There are sometimes reason to use it. It's shorter, so easier to remember. It's also easier to send in text. I use a selfhosted shortener, so I can use these as dynamic links and can change the target if I need to while keeping the shortlink the same. But I agree that most don't use it for respectable reasons.
I remember seeing a zero width shortener, which uses invisible characters to encode your link.
It was useful way back but idr why? Like copying and pasting was always a thing, I think it was commonly used in yt videos with piracy links and they werent in the description.
It's useful if you want someone to copy a URL from a physical medium, so they don't have to copy a huge URL.
They're useful for printed media
"Find more info at bitly/event" instead of "find more info at facebook.com/unnecessarilylongurlthatnobodyisgoingtotype"
Or for a qr code where it needs to be small and somehow your URL is too long
But yes, relying on a third party company for something that needs to last a long time isn't really smart. There are many books that have online content now inaccessible because they used a link shortener that's dead or that doesn't let you update the redirection without paying a ransom (need to pay $120/year to bitly if you need to change the redirection)
It was bound to happen, and one less reason to use shortlinks.
make your own, selfhost shortlink app, buy an eays to remember/type domain linkshrink.ing or something, tons of options for cheap extensions when the domain is for yourself and not selling things or running a business
Hah!
Companies tried to make this a thing 20 years ago, and people just dropped the middle-men like hot potatoes. Bitly thinks it'll be different this time because people have become used to using their service, but all of the pressures that had people using link shorteners in the first place have already fallen by the wayside.
This probably isn't going to end well for them.
I remember blackberry using bitly links in their developer emails in 2013, and at the time it was possible to see the stats of any link by just adding "+" at the end of the link (now requires authentication or maybe only paid users can lock that page)
It was dismaying to see that it got only 50 clicks or so lol
I heaven used them in forever, thought they already were using ads.
Sigh 😮💨
Time to spin up a selfhosted URL shortener
I've no doubt most if not all Lemmy users will never buy into a paid bitly subscription. But does anyone here at least know of someone who does, or has a similar subscription? Who would need that? Is bitly so essential to some people that they would pay for an ad free experience? I'm not programmer but I had an interest in it once. Building a URL shortener is one of the most basic programs beginners can get into. There must be hundreds of services for shortening URLs. I know that's a lot of questions but I find this so intriguing.
So I went to bitly's website to see if I could find anymore info here. It looks like most of bitly's paying customers are businesses that generate QR codes and links that can use custom domains. Since these businesses are already paying customers, anyone using those accounts shouldn't see ads, but those businesses' customers probably will! Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like bitly will inject ads into their customers' customers screens. If I was one of these business owners I would be pissed lol.
You all get it totally wrong, it's not part of enshittification, they add the landingpage so you can securely check where tue link is going...
And if there's a landing page, why not use it to show you great deals...would be sad to not use that real estate
That's \s by the way
~~May~~ Will
We never learned from Digg huh?