Zohran and the Short Link

this is how the government should communicate with its people - push out via all social media channels but always link back to something everyone can access!

hopefully this stuff gets pushed out via email too? not enough open protocols to receive pushes from otherwise

People are discovering go links from first principles.

Given how untrustworthy the most popular social media providers have proven to be, it's madness that so many politicians and government accounts still use things like Xitter or facebook as their primary communication medium.

Even ignoring the political misinformation that is rampant on these platforms and often promoted widely by the platform because it is inflammatory and gets lots of engagement, they also severely punish posts that link away from the site, which public safety and government accounts obviously need to do. It's a hazard for public safety info to be targeted primarily at a feed designed to bury it. Even if you're following those accounts on Xitter or facebook, they're effectively never going to show you their posts.

The problem with these short pithy urls is that their lifetime is limited - there's only so many initiative names and they're going to collide and be removed and replaced.

Cool uris don't change[1]. Short, readable uris are great but they should be merely redirecs, and the mapping should be version controlled and exposed to the public as an immutable history.

[1] https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI