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You don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon!
All links on Mastodon count as 23 characters towards your post limit, no matter how long the links actually are.
Link shortener services like bit.ly, t.co etc track users who click on their links. This is really bad for privacy. If you use link shorteners on Mastodon, people may assume you are just doing it for tracking purposes.
More info at https://fedi.tips/you-dont-need-link-shorteners-on-mastodon
p.s. Just been pointed out that the official iOS app has a bug which causes links to be more than 23 characters. You can avoid this bug by using a third party iOS app such as Toot! or Ice Cubes or Ivory, or by logging in on your server's website.
What about reddit link shorteners like https://redd.it/asdf?
@feditips the official mastodon app also limits you to a character count of 500 even if you mastodon instance character limit is higher then that. For example my personally mastodon instance has a character limit of 20,000.
@Spellbind0127 @feditips what happens to posts that go over 500?
@thevballdude @feditips your are able to see post that are over 500 characters long you just can't post them.
@feditips This is great to know!
These things are so obvious to me that I hardly consider them but thank you for bringing this up.
@feditips I always think of them as phishing attempts.
@feditips what about other platforms in the fediverse?
@feditips ooh thanks for the tip did not know this... not like shadow uses any url shorterners anyways but spreading the info is very helpful
@feditips whoa didn't know that. Good to know.
@feditips never click in link shorteners, you dont know what is hiding there. And its crucial to see the domain complete...
ɐıunp zsɐɯoʇ 
@feditips this is really important information! A lot of people don’t understand what’s wrong with link shorteners…
@feditips That's false in one particular instance, and that is the personal URL shortener, which is not used for tracking purposes, but for the purposes of stamping your identity onto your posts; I use as my own personal short domain, cp90.us, and anything posted which links to my blog will use that. The plugin for Wordpress for Fediverse posting supports it, for God's sake.
@feditips There are many reasons to use link shorteners besides tracking. Some people use software that can post to multiple social profiles, some of which may not treat links the way Mastodon does. Others may need to provide a link frequently, and a short URL is easier to type and clearer about its purpose than the real URL (e.g. John Hodgman is notorious for making bit.ly links for everything, especially tickets for live shows). Please don't vilify people with generalizations.
@feditips Also, and I can't believe I have to say this to an account called "Fedi.Tips", Mastodon is not the only software on the fediverse. Not every ActivityPub integration has to treat links the same way. Just because you're using Mastodon doesn't mean the author of the post is.
@eagerpebble @feditips Fully agree. The original post is an oversimplification. I use link shorteners to make the link memorable, so people can remember it and share it via a range of channels. This is very important for effective advocacy/activism.
If there’s one thing that’s going to doom Mastodon, it’s the preachy tendency of some to think there’s only one right way to do things.
@JonathanMosen @feditips@mstdn.social You should see the mentions-only thread Fedi.Tips used to argue with me about this. Useful account to blocked in under an hour.
You've just listed cases of short-links being used, not legitimate reasons to do so. Besides it's a fact that analytics is the most common purpose for such links.
If you redirect in order to provide more descriptive or permanent links, then there is no reason to rely on tracking services with privacy-unfriendly terms of service.
But even then it remains a bad practice security-wise.
@feditips
Heh, I wouldn't discount the use of goodwill shorteners like #Envs for badly formed URLs, as an exception. Although, when you copy from address bar, browsers would make sure to make link compatible with standard, so it's pretty rare you'd ever end up with such a URL.
I had to use URL shortener yesterday to satisfy Youtube's parsing of my Matrix.to channel link. But parser on Mastodon is OK.
@feditips Yep, good points. But I wouldn't mind of masto could allow real hyper-linking so I could post URLs-- to keywords or other content without burning 24 rendered chars to do it. Yes, it would need malware filtering, but that's pretty standard art today.
@feditips Additional downside of link shorteners: If they go offline (temporarily or permanently), you can’t use their links.
@feditips WOW, great
@feditips Thank you for this! :)
@feditips i use the tusker mastodon ios app :)
@feditips metatext is pretty good for iOS too imo
@feditips - Ice Cubes is vastly superior to the official iOS app in every way anyway.
@feditips Ice Cubes is AWESOME!
@feditips thanks for the heads up!