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> One can really store 4KB of arbitrary data with a url minifier system and share it for free.

Free for you, not free for the minifier service.

That's like saying "One day while I was at Chick-Fil-A I had an epiphany while putting honey on my biscuit. I thought: 'Chick-Fil-A is really nice to provide all this honey for free.' And then it struck me... One can really take all the honey they want and use it to refill their bottles at home one honey packet at a time."

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If you think your getting some great deal by going into fast food places and taking all the packets of condiments you can get then your playing yourself. That food chain already won by getting your feet in there. I doubt these companies fret of such things including the url minifier service.

Doesn't mean that said companies are OK with this. The difference is scale. Companies don't care until these tactics get popular enough to affect the bottom line. Chick-fil-a doesn't care about the honey because the "hack" isn't popular and hasn't been done at scale (yet). If it does get popular, you can bet that it will get banned.

See also: Salad towers in China https://kotaku.com/how-chinese-ingenuity-destroyed-salad-bar...

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