Enshittification is coming:
Beginning in the next month, when users click Bitly links or QR Codes, they may see a preview page prior to being directed to the destination URL. The page includes information about the link destination and may include advertising.
It was bound to happen, and one less reason to use shortlinks.
make your own, selfhost shortlink app, buy an eays to remember/type domain linkshrink.ing or something, tons of options for cheap extensions when the domain is for yourself and not selling things or running a business
Hah!
Companies tried to make this a thing 20 years ago, and people just dropped the middle-men like hot potatoes. Bitly thinks it’ll be different this time because people have become used to using their service, but all of the pressures that had people using link shorteners in the first place have already fallen by the wayside.
This probably isn’t going to end well for them.
I remember blackberry using bitly links in their developer emails in 2013, and at the time it was possible to see the stats of any link by just adding “+” at the end of the link (now requires authentication or maybe only paid users can lock that page)
It was dismaying to see that it got only 50 clicks or so lol
I heaven used them in forever, thought they already were using ads.
I’m extremely OOTL here. Bit.ly rings a bell but I can’t tell if I interact with it or how. Guess I’ll find out when I see the ads
It is (was) a service that redirected a short URL like bit.ly/customurl to www.example.com/extremely/long/path/to/share/and/type?parameter=crazy&anotherparameter=long
perfect for sharing
Edit: removed the potentially dangerous link thanks to @dabda@[email protected]
But it seems there is a 2048 character limit, so unfortunately no storing of files in base64 data URI.
You can escape the . in a URL to break the markdown auto-linking:
bit\.ly/customurldisplays as:
bit.ly/customurl
I’ve no doubt most if not all Lemmy users will never buy into a paid bitly subscription. But does anyone here at least know of someone who does, or has a similar subscription? Who would need that? Is bitly so essential to some people that they would pay for an ad free experience? I’m not programmer but I had an interest in it once. Building a URL shortener is one of the most basic programs beginners can get into. There must be hundreds of services for shortening URLs. I know that’s a lot of questions but I find this so intriguing.
So I went to bitly’s website to see if I could find anymore info here. It looks like most of bitly’s paying customers are businesses that generate QR codes and links that can use custom domains. Since these businesses are already paying customers, anyone using those accounts shouldn’t see ads, but those businesses’ customers probably will! Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like bitly will inject ads into their customers’ customers screens. If I was one of these business owners I would be pissed lol.
MayWillWe never learned from Digg huh?
You all get it totally wrong, it’s not part of enshittification, they add the landingpage so you can securely check where tue link is going…
And if there’s a landing page, why not use it to show you great deals…would be sad to not use that real estate
That’s \s by the way
