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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

Mastodon manages to do it without a shortener, so I don't believe that's the answer.

That's kind of the problem, they did fire their developers.

i think you should read the replies to the hackernews post, there's some interesting discussion there with more nuance. particularly the thread started by user "kens"

But Hanlon's razor says you shouldn't.

All right, we got a razor fight!