Twitter's short link service, t.co, is adding a five-second delay to some domains. Like threads.net

trashhalo@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 303 points –
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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.

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.

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