Whenever I paste a link in any sort of messaging app - iMessages to Slack - it puts a thumbnail and summary, polluting the entire conversation with tons of noise.
Messaging apps have no business in looking up the URL. Just let it pass as a link.
Fuck everything about this and we need to push back on this nonsense.
Most links are unreadable (e.g. an ID to a cloud file), and are truncated anyways even if readable.
The preview gives me the title of the webpage, which is infinitely more useful -- especially letting me know whether it's a document I've already seen (and don't need to open) or something new, and if so, what.
The thing that bothers me is also that I, as a user, have no choice - it just does it automatically.
Do you like IRC?
Another issue with auto-unfurling links or generating previews of URLs is the potential for stalking. If I'm hunting my ex and I know their cell phone number AND that they have an iPhone I can simply send a link to a website and let iOS generate the preview... which then pings the URL of the website which I set up and I can now run geo-IP resolution and narrow down where my ex is (and maybe I follow up with a well-crafted PDF exploit when I'm ready to narrow down even more on an area).
While systemvoltage was a bit brusque in how the complaint was worded above, these "friendly and helpful" features of Slack, SMS, and other apps can have devastating unforeseen consequences. I question the value of having to opt out of these features instead of making them opt-in instead.
In practice it's going to be difficult because:
1) You can't do effective geolocation on cell phone IP address, except perhaps at a country level [1]
2) Your ex would need to open your message to trigger the link preview loading. If you're stalking them, they're probably either ignoring you or blocking you
3) At most, if the ex is connected to a Wi-Fi network like Starbucks and opens the message, you'll be able to get the city they're in, maybe.
But at the end of the day, what you'd get from link previews is no different from embedding a tracker image in an e-mail. And while it requires someone to suspect they're being stalked, blocking would prevent all of this.
[1] http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/mahesh/papers/ephemera-imc09.pd...
Or, more simply, you can't be rickrolled if you know the destination in advance.
Seems like a benefit for site owners to me.
Not to mention that the server is reducing the image size of a thumbnail, potentially converting from HTTP to HTTPS, and so on.
Maybe, but it’s definitely less control for the site owner.
Maybe she wants to do analytics on the previews (how far shared, which ip regions) or delete the content at a specific time. Etc.