Bitly Changes: Link-Shortening, Now with Advertising
Bitly, the link-shortening service long used by millions, decides it’s going to place an ad between you and your link. Don’t like it? It’ll cost ya.
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Everything must enshittify.
Have link shorteners ever not been shitty? It obfuscates a link for the sake of making things look pretty for people who can't format text
Link shorteners have absolutely been useful when you need to go to a long URL on a entirely different device you can't copy a link to easily.
I've used them to make it easy to get to scripts.
Service-specific link shorteners are alright, like youtu.be, a.co and goo.gl/maps. At least know roughly where you're going.
For anything else, I rather see the full URLs, and if I need to share a link on a paper medium, I also make it available in a QRcode form.
IIRC, they originally became popular because they saved characters for microblogs like Twitter. They've outlasted their usefulness though.
I think some used them to gain insight in clicks (bit.ly provided stats for numbers, user agents etc.), and to track the origin of clicks by generating a unique shortened URL for each linking post.
Also, the obvious use case of turning a long direct URL to a file into something people can actually be bothered to manually copy from paper...
When it comes to email I just have my server reject any containing links that point to URL shorteners. I’m not stupid enough to click them anyway but it’s safe to assume you’re just a scammer or some other lowlife, even if you’re otherwise considered a reputable business.
