Related: A URL shortener not shortening the URL but makes it look very dodgy (434 points, 2023, 100 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609461
The key point here is "not shortening"
The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
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Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#82Related: A URL shortener not shortening the URL but makes it look very dodgy (434 points, 2023, 100 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609461
That's less a URL shortener and more a URL dodgifier.
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#83There may actually be some utility here. LLM agents refuse to traverse the links. Tested with gemini-3-pro, gpt-5.2, and opus 4.5. edit: gpt-oss 20B & 120B both eagerly visit it.
I wish this came a day earlier. There is a current "show your personal site" post on top of HN [1] with 1500+ comments. I wonder how many of those sites are or will be hammered by AI bots in the next few days to steal/scrape content. If this can be used as a temporary guard against AI bots, that would have been a good opportunity to test it out. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618714
I think that something specifically intended for this, like Anubis, is a much better option.
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#84What's up with the creepy ads on this website? It seems like they are actually sketchy ads and not just fake ads for comedic effect. One shows some scammy nonsense about your device being infected and the other links to a real VPN app.
That's just the ambient creepiness of the internet. It's a creepy place!
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#85Related: A URL shortener not shortening the URL but makes it look very dodgy (434 points, 2023, 100 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609461
That's less a URL shortener and more a URL dodgifier.
To be fair, the one in the OP also did not shorten any of the links I gave it.
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#86I think it’s perfectly reasonable to make something useless for fun, it’s an interesting idea.
But what I’d like to understand is why there are so many of the same thing. I know I’ve seen this exact idea multiple times on HN. It’s funny the first time, but once it’s done once and the novelty is gone (which is almost immediately), what’s the point of another and another and another?
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish this came a day earlier. There is a current "show your personal site" post on top of HN [1] with 1500+ comments. I wonder how many of those sites are or will be hammered by AI bots in the next few days to steal/scrape content. If this can be used as a temporary guard against AI bots, that would have been a good opportunity to test it out. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618714
I think that something specifically intended for this, like Anubis, is a much better option.
Anubis flatly refuses me access to several websites when I'm accessing them with a normal Chromium with enabled JS and whatnot, from a mainstream, typical OS, just with aggressive anti-tracking settings.
Not sure if that's the intended use case. At least Cloudflare politely masks for CAPTCHA.
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#88Please don't make any more URL shorteners, they are just a bad idea. https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/URLTeam
Way to miss the point of the project!
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#89I think it’s perfectly reasonable to make something useless for fun, it’s an interesting idea. But what I’d like to understand is why there are so many of the same thing. I know I’ve seen this exact idea multiple times on HN. It’s funny the first time, but once it’s done once and the novelty is gone (which is almost immediately), what’s the point of another and another and another?
I think it's just someone learning something new most of the time.
I have home made url shorteners in go, rust, java, python, php, elixir, typescript, etc. why? because I'm trying the language and this kind of project touches on many things: web, databases, custom logic, how and what design patterns can I apply using as much of the language as I can to build the thing.
Re: The URL shortener that makes your links look as suspicious as possible
#90/instagram.c1ic.link/mCLIIp_free_vacation_offer.zip