@feditips useful information. The UK government site has some interesting advice too https://gcs.civilservice.gov.uk/blog/link-shorteners-the-long-and-short-of-why-you-shouldnt-use-them/

@feditips many thanks for your suggestion guys.
Well done 👍 because of I was surely wrong in order to understand how many clicks the link received from here.

Anyway, thanks for your shout it out 🙏💘

Link shorteners are bad for privacy, and bad for the web in general. I'm very glad #mastodon does not force anyone to use them.

@feditips Handy to know :)

@feditips Just jumped back on here after a while. Glad to see link preview cards now!

@feditips

@feditips I find perspectives like this so puzzling. We want Mastodon to be more broadly adopted and more entities to join the Fediverse, then in the next breath we're vilifying tools that help measure any type of metric of engagement. We're never going to get journalists and the broader marketing communities to take this platform seriously if there's no ways to measure ROI. Some people may be happy with that, but you can't aspire for huge community growth and have no modern analytics tools.

@feditips thank you!

@feditips @austinnix that's cool, thanks for the tip

@feditips I never knew this! What a great tip!

@feditips Deutsche Übersetzung (mit Übersetzungstool)

„Sie müssen auf Mastodon keine Link-Shortener verwenden!

Alle Links auf Mastodon werden mit 23 Zeichen auf Ihr Beitragslimit angerechnet, egal wie lang die Links tatsächlich sind.

Link-Shortener-Dienste wie bit.ly, t.co usw. verfolgen Benutzer, die auf ihre Links klicken. Das ist wirklich schlecht für die Privatsphäre. Wenn Sie Link-Shortener auf Mastodon verwenden, können die Leute davon ausgehen, dass Sie dies nur zu Tracking-Zwecken tun

@feditips
TY for letting me know this (I didn't, & internet tracking is a valid concern for me, certainly as I surf about*), but I can't be the only Heathen around opting for this tracking trade-off to utilize an URL shortening service as a quick tool to have some customization options on a link's name that's about to be posted? Can I?

* For openness' sake I can't deny on some platforms I've used shortened tracking data from links I'd posted in my own security studies. But I declare my intent.

@feditips also contributes to rapid / sudden link rot, and can be part of obfuscating phishing links, etc. Generally best avoided.

@feditips
I'm sure there's a very good and likely technical reason, but I'm just curious, why 23 characters?

@feditips https://oh/cool/is/it/then/possible/to/go/past/the/text/limit/just.by.writing.stuff.in.an.url?and=why#does-my-mastodon-client-not-know-that-when-it+shows+me+the-counter

@feditips, I don't like link shortener, these are always a security risk, even if they are "clean", because they prevent seeing the destination of a link, which could be a malicious page.
Therefore, it is convenient to have a service like this or similar at hand, well in the Bookmarks or also as browser extension to reveal the original link in case of doubt.
https://unshorten.it