Hey #Fediverse can I ask you a favor?

[drahardja@sfba.social]

Hey #Fediverse can I ask you a favor?

Please don’t post URLs that have been shortened. Link-shortening services can not only potentially *track* your interactions and add telemetry to track your behaviors, they can also *break* and make your links unusable.

You can use services like https://urlexpander.net or install an app (I like Link Unshortener (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/link-unshortener/id1506953658)) to find the ultimate destination of a shortened link, and then post that instead.

Remember, all URLs in #Mastodon count as 23 characters, no matter how long the actual URL is, so there really is no benefit to shortening your URLs.

[manalejandro@cf-ap.com]

@drahardja why not? you can have federated shortened links with https://fedishort.com in the cloud and deploy your own worker.

https://github.com/manalejandro/cf-fedishort

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@manalejandro So you want people to *create an account* to post links? And then have the links sync separately from your post? WTF. This is making things WORSE.

Post the full URL.

[manalejandro@cf-ap.com]

@drahardja don't know how to create a temporary email if you don't trust the system? Then create your own worker. Short links serve as mnemonic rules to help you remember them and avoid having to go all the way to the status link that prints 23 characters. They are federated and in the cloud, so they will always be available.

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@manalejandro NO.

You’re creating new problems. This is bad for the Fediverse.

Go away.

[manalejandro@cf-ap.com]

@drahardja that's your opinion. If you don't mind, can I show you the human code? https://genome.manalejandro.com

[emersunn@beige.party]

@drahardja Good to know. I’ll be better in the future

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@emersunn To be clear: it wasn’t a subtoot. But I’m glad to hear it!

[oldcoder@dansu.org]

I've started to add my own Angie [Nginx spoon] rules to implement my own short links. This approach allows #selfhosting people to use any of their own websites as a link shortener.

This should at least reduce the issues that you've mentioned. Another advantage of this approach is that wildcards and even regular expressions are supported.

Here's an example of an #Nginx or #Angie link shorten rule. This goes before the first existing location block for a given server.

location ~ ^/ai-*article$ {
    return 301 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-fake-goodness-sake-robert-kiraly-wl4ec/;
}

This example redirects both "/ai-article" and "aiarticle".

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@oldcoder This is completely unnecessary. Paste the original link in the post.

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@drahardja i never knew the 23 character rule, that's a really neat design decision tbh

[oldcoder@dansu.org]

Thank you for the point and suggestion. I trust that a number of people will follow it.

I disagree that the alternative is completely unnecessary. Some posters prefer links that are human-readable. If the key goals are met, it isn't essential that everybody use the same approach.

In my case, I like to give out some of my short links by text message or phone. That isn't possible with long links.

My short links are my own code. They don't track anybody and I'll keep them working while I'm alive. They also usually point to my own posts. It isn't for anybody else to tell me that I must use one link to my own posts and not another.

[drahardja@sfba.social]

If you’re familiar with command line tools, you can use `curl` to get the final URL:

```
curl -ILsw '%{url_effective}' -o /dev/null [URL]
```

Replace `[URL]` with the shortened URL.

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@oldcoder Link shorteners may be good for handing out URLs to people in real life. But on Mastodon, they are an antipattern. They are brittle, potentially privacy-violating, and save no characters. On Mastodon, post the original URL.

[piiiepsbrummm@chaos.social]

@drahardja @oldcoder
If you want to shorten URL on your self-hosted page, than the additional compute/storage requirements outwight the complexity gain by far. KISS!

[oldcoder@dansu.org]

I've already explained that "on Mastodon" or anywhere else, the alternative that I've explained isn't "brittle" or "privacy-violating".

The alternative has all of the advantages of what you propose and none of the disadvantages.

I'll add that it isn't for anybody else to tell me that, if there are two links to my own posts, both of which links I control myself, I must give out one link and not the other.

With all due respect, that part is presumptuous.

If the technical points that I've explained aren't clear, I don't think there is much more to say. Thank you for your own suggestion.

[souverain@social.souverain.ovh]

@vincent @drahardja j'aimerais bien pouvoir supprimer cette option mais elle n'existe pas dans l'App (ou alors j'ai mal regardé)

[drahardja@sfba.social]

Me: Don’t use link shorteners

Random people: Here’s my link shortener, you should use it

[elduvelle@neuromatch.social]

@OldCoder @drahardja whyyy

[elduvelle@neuromatch.social]

@drahardja it's incredible really - I wonder if these accounts are some kind of bots?