Hello new people, welcome! 👋
You don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon!
All links in Mastodon posts count as 23 characters towards your limit, no matter how long they actually are.
Hello new people, welcome! 👋
You don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon!
All links in Mastodon posts count as 23 characters towards your limit, no matter how long they actually are.
@feditips I actually didn't know that, is this something specific to mastodon or does other software on the fediverse implement this too?
I'm not sure if others do, but the others tend to have much larger limits (or make it easier for admins to set larger limits).
@feditips that's also true, I guess other software doesn't need it as much :P
To be fair, a few people do use them as a cheaper alternative to domain names, I've seen some activists use them on real life posters for example.
But, yeah, that doesn't apply to vast majority of shortener links!
@feditips I think that most people use link shorteners *because* they (not only the tracker company) can track their visitors.😉
Thats great news.
In a related subject, markup shouldnt hide urls, Maston should reveal the url/domain, should display them beside.
@feditips In fact, #LinkShorteners are harmful since they prevent #Previews and obfuscate the destination, bricking #ShinigamiEyes in the process...
The URL is visible on a computer if you hover the mouse over it without clicking. Equivalents on mobile are trickier, but it's a general problem with browsers as most links are behind links rather than just written URLs.
Of course.
And yeah, the services eventually shut down and break all their links. Even worse, someone might take over their domain and redirect the links elsewhere to something nasty.
@feditips @whalecoiner Link-shortener & proxy URLs are mystery meat. They track you. They inject a middleman between you and what you’re hoping to see/read. They slow down the web. Over time, they disappear, breaking connections.
Bitly, tco, AppleNews, Flipboard, whatever … No thanks, I don’t care what it is, if it’s a link-shortener or proxy URL, I scroll on by.
Thank you for your service! 👏
@feditips I go out of my way to avoid using short links when posting on mastodon as short links can be used to track people
I follow the link in my browser until I get to the actual site
Then I strip away everything after any "?" In the url & resubmit it to get rid of any tracking goo & dribble
Then I cut & paste the resulting url in my mastotoot
It's how many characters were on Twitter's original link shortener.
The original idea was to show that shorteners aren't needed on here because the link is the same length.
@feditips why 23
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