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The URL shortener situation is out of control

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Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#11

Post by userbinator »

This is propagated by people not really understanding URLs and blindly reposting links that have already been wrapped in a URL shortener through services that wrap them in another one. Whenever I repost links, I repost only the URL of the final page, stripping off anything unnecessary. Sadly, the trend of browsers hiding URLs or pieces of them is not helping the situation either.

I don't think this can be solved technologically - HTTP redirects are not difficult to detect but a lot of these shorteners (and becoming increasingly more common) use Javascript and/or meta tags to accomplish redirection. The solution is better educated users that don't create chains of shortened URLs.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#12

Post by bbuffone »

baddox wrote: post #2

> Redirects are being abused and I don't see any work happening in HTTP 2.0 to change it. I agree that this is an unfortunate pattern, but what exactly could the HTTP spec do to change it? The only thing I can think of is limiting the number of chained redirects, although I don't see browsers implementing that if longer chains are even remotely common.

If the HTTP spec added 2 new VERBS (SHORT, LONG) as a method of shortening and elongating URLs then many things could be done.

1.) The browser could pro-actively lengthening the URL and the same way the server can respond 302/301 now the browser could cache this. 2.) The server could hand-back the final long URL with out needing to redirect the URL multiple times 3.) We could create services that can be integrated into the server software that integrate 3rd parties. 4.) Each domain could create their own shortened URL domains and mask it in a better way.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#13

Post by noblethrasher »

kefka wrote: post #4
baddox wrote: post #2

> Redirects are being abused and I don't see any work happening in HTTP 2.0 to change it. I agree that this is an unfortunate pattern, but what exactly could the HTTP spec do to change it? The only thing I can think of is limiting the number of chained redirects, although I don't see browsers implementing that if longer chains are even remotely common.

If I remember correctly, there was an old (very old) project with reversible links called Project Xanadu. if my sketchy memory serves me, it was based around using a currency and updatable links. Along with that, the idea was that you could also share segments of movies and music with the hyperlink system. I'm pretty sure it died a pitiful death due to it being completely secret until after HTTP got ingrained.

I looked at it before, and it was, indeed, neat. But, I'm not sure that a project that spent 30 years in development before an initial release can really be said to have "died".

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#14

Post by codyb »

userbinator wrote: post #11

This is propagated by people not really understanding URLs and blindly reposting links that have already been wrapped in a URL shortener through services that wrap them in another one. Whenever I repost links, I repost only the URL of the final page, stripping off anything unnecessary. Sadly, the trend of browsers hiding URLs or pieces of them is not helping the situation either. I don't think this can be solved tech…

Could a URL wrapper service follow a URL through its redirects only wrap the final address?

I'm not a networking expert, but it seems viable enough to me. Shoot out a GET request, wrap the final address with your shortener. Cut out the middlemen.

It's an idea. It might fail at scale. And might not be feasible.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#15

Post by jacquesm »

nostromo wrote: post #9

We could put a stop to marketing redirects tomorrow if we didn't allow redirects to set cookies. (Or perhaps only allowed a cookie if the redirect was served by the same domain as the target domain.)

That will break just about every affiliate program that I'm aware of. Of course this is your intention but there will be a very large number of websites that will see their turnover plummet if that should happen.

I personally would not mind but I'm pretty sure that a lot of monied interests would not like to see this happen.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#16

Post by noblethrasher »

nostromo wrote: post #9

We could put a stop to marketing redirects tomorrow if we didn't allow redirects to set cookies. (Or perhaps only allowed a cookie if the redirect was served by the same domain as the target domain.)

That could break a lot of bad-yet-benign code.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#17

Post by terracatta »

This is classic "Tragedy of the commons" behavior where each individual group with a link shortener is benefited by encouraging and enforcing its usage (ability to kill malicious links easily, user tracking, etc)

I'm not sure if this can be resolved until users are educated sufficiently on the long-term adverse effects of link shortening services (link rot, privacy concerns, slow/broken redirects, etc).

For change to happen the demand for direct links (generated explicitly by things like this blog posts, or implicitly by higher bounce rates due to long loading times) will need to be enough to outweigh the benefits to organizations that are building them.

Edit:

Even if there is evidence that shows this, why should _I_ be the one to give up my link shortener service when it will have no significant improvement to the overall problem which involves tens or hundreds of these services?

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#18

Post by mmahemoff »

That's really unfortunate. And it's not just performance, it really messes around with OS-level URL handling protocols like Android intents (and possibly FB's app links and iOS's new Extensibility).

I recently found this happening with Twitter's Android app. The user sees a link to player.fm and thinks it will open the native Player FM app if they have it installed, since it's registered to handle that URL pattern. But instead, the OS offers web browsers and Twitter as ways to open the link, because it's not really a player.fm link as presented to the user, but a t.co link. If the user then chooses a browser, the browser immediately redirects to the correct URL, which then pulls up the intents menu again.

7 redirects could potentially be 7 popup menus for the user to navigate through.

The OS could pre-emptively follow redirects, but that would of course introduce considerable latency since normally the menu is presented without any call being made at all. Maybe the best solution for OSs is to present the menu immediately but still make the call in the background, so the menu could be updated if a redirect happens.

"I don't see any work happening in HTTP 2.0 to change it."

Probably the best HTML standard for dealing with it is the "ping" attribute which allows a way for servers to be notified of a click without actually redirecting. However, that's HTML and not HTTP, and these days, apps are more popular HTTP clients than browsers, and apps don't manually bother to implement things like that.

So there are probably things that could be done with the standard. Perhaps using some distributed lookup table to ensure at most 1 redirect (by caching the redirect sequence and returning it with the first request). That does ignore any personalisation that goes on, but generally these should be permanent redirects without personalisation anyway.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#20

Post by chetanahuja »

shawnz wrote: post #10

> Every redirect is a one more point of failure, one more domain that can rot, one more server that can go down, one more layer between me and the content. These are all good reasons, but are there any real users who are actually being affected by these issues? If it is just a theoretical concern, then I don't think it is reasonable to call the situation "officially out of control".

Seven redirects to different domains means seven new TCP connections being established, very likely over a crappy mobile connection (see twitter usage numbers from mobile). The user experience is definitely being harmed here.
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