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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

#71

Post by AndrewDucker »

Groxx wrote: post #56
mmahemoff wrote: post #18

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. B…

For Android at least, I've been using this and I'm pretty happy with it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teaandtoys... It usually works, and when it does it's nice to fix the idiotic Twitter-android-app behavior.

Thank you - I've just installed this, and it's great!

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#72

Post by PeterisP »

alttab wrote: post #63
mmahemoff wrote: post #18

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. B…

Prefetching the URL will trash analytics, which is why most of this is really done. Its not like the short URLs are easier to copy/paste, or remember.

If user convenience requires trashing server analytics, then server analytics should be trashed.

Possibly even deliberately - enabling that by default automated way in commonly used products, so that this tracking becomes ineffective and useless, and there's no more motivation to insert these artifical layers of redirection.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#73

Post by boobsbr »

encoderer wrote: post #58
Istof wrote: post #39

8 redirects is pretty bad but it is not much worst then loading files from 15 different domains (which is very popular nowadays)

Wait. Why is that bad?

Because you are being served content from other people's servers. If one of those servers fails, the whole site you are trying to load fails.

Like hotlinking images from someone else. They might block you, or they might just serve your goatse.jpg instead.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#74

Post by a3n »

a3n wrote: post #32

> What do you think? I think URL un-shortening should be done in the browser, on URLs that were shortened according to a standard hashing method, so your browser can tell you where the URL will go. Shortening sevices are ridiculous and dangerous.

Yup, I was a technical loon for saying "hash". Nevertheless, I rarely follow a shortened URL (and I see many) because I don't know where they go.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#75

Post by TheCoelacanth »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #67
sukuriant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be for analytics, so it knows how its own service is being used and who is accessing websites through it. It comes with a convenient feature that bad URLs can be taken down on its site.

Genuinely curious: How does it take down bad URLs? And, by "bad", are we talking about 404s?

"Bad" as in malware, phishing, etc. When they recognize that a URL is bad, they can simply stop redirecting to that URL.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#76

Post by Lifescape »

X-Istence wrote: post #37
Lifescape wrote: post #22

I couldn't find anything that would output something similar to the redirects image shown in this post, so wrote a small script in node to do that. It looks like this: http://cl.ly/image/3T3e462G1C3d Here's the script: https://gist.github.com/akenn/7ca7e99a51c3a4abc049 Speaking of, what software did this guy use? Is there a bash script that's better than what I wrote?

Here is a simple script that uses curl/awk to print the same sort of information: https://gist.github.com/bertjwregeer/12ae691e5c285f334a36 No need to use Node.

That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#77

Post by encoderer »

boobsbr wrote: post #73
encoderer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Why is that bad?

Because you are being served content from other people's servers. If one of those servers fails, the whole site you are trying to load fails. Like hotlinking images from someone else. They might block you, or they might just serve your goatse.jpg instead.

Eh, I don't buy that.

> Because you are being served content from other people's servers. If one of those servers fails, the whole site you are trying to load fails.

Say what?

Many of those things are just tracking pixels. There is no way to serve them from the site host, that's the whole point. And if they fail to load, nbd.

And sure, if some substantial piece of JS or CSS doesn't load, that could cause problems on the page, but in most cases it wouldn't cause total failure of the site loading.

Public CDNs for shared assets makes a lot of sense.

These things are nothing like hotlinking somebodies image.

Re: The URL shortener situation is out of control

#79

Post by Istof »

encoderer wrote: post #77
boobsbr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you are being served content from other people's servers. If one of those servers fails, the whole site you are trying to load fails. Like hotlinking images from someone else. They might block you, or they might just serve your goatse.jpg instead.

Eh, I don't buy that. > Because you are being served content from other people's servers. If one of those servers fails, the whole site you are trying to load fails. Say what? Many of those things are just tracking pixels. There is no way to serve them from the site host, that's the whole point. And if they fail to load, nbd. And sure, if some substantial piece of JS or CSS doesn't load, that could cause problems on…

CDNs are supposed to decrease load times but in my experience it is the opposite... sometimes I wonder if CDNs exist only for data collection purposes.
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