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Twitter's short link service, t.co, is adding a five-second delay to some domains. Like threads.net (news.ycombinator.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 28 points 3 years ago (24 children)

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 😂

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  • [–] 57 points 3 years ago (11 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years 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

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years 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.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Read up on Archive.org and "link rot".

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    I know what that is, and I believe in the right to be forgotten.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years 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.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    You being able to track engagement is bad, actually.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Real name and face on the internet guy doesn't get to have an opinion on tracking.

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  • [+] 6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    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?

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