mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.

Administered by:

Server stats:

18K
active users

In case you missed it, all links on Mastodon count as 23 characters towards your limit, no matter how many characters the link really is.

So, you don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon as they won't actually affect the link's length.

Mastodon does this because it's better for everyone's privacy to avoid link shortener services, it means people can see what they're clicking on, and the link won't stop working if the shortener service shuts down.

More info at:

➡️ fedi.tips/you-dont-need-link-s

fedi.tipsYou don’t need link shorteners on Mastodon | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
More from Fedi.Tips
Ryan Welsh

@feditips My random thought on this:

How did the decision land on using 23 characters of the limit for URLs?

Or for that matter, why does any standard emoji (not instance emojis) – like ⁉️ – eat TWO characters from the limit instead of just one?

These are the things that live rent-free in my brain, apparently.