FastForward: Bypass link shorteners, don't waste time getting to the final link | Hacker News Reader

FastForward: Bypass link shorteners, don't waste time getting to the final link

github.com

37 pointsnateb202211 comments

I can’t remember the last time I stumpled upon something like bit.ly or adf.ly

Pretty much only used as a hack for sms character limit, or for making urls “prettier” when they get absurdly long with lots of parameters.

They are commonly used to track opens by marketing.

https://bitly.com/pages/solutions/digital-marketing

https://bitly.com/blog/how-to-use-bitly-for-digital-marketin...

In the old days bit.ly didn't protect the stats page, adding a "+" at the end of a bit.ly link would show them to anyone. (Hits over time, referer pages). It was interesting to see how disinterested people were about some promotions.

Is there any value in buying a short domain to use with a custom URL shortner? I have an 8 letter .com along with the .net, .org, etc.. There’s a 4 letter domain on a ccTLD that I could buy aftermarket. Ex:

    bluegoat.com
    goat.tt

It’s the same price as renewing my domain on the 10 most popular TLDs for 8-10 years. My gut tells me it’s a waste of money and that I’m better off using one of my current domains (ex: bluegoat.io) if I ever have a need for a custom link shortener.

Does anyone have any insight they could share?

i've always heard that the primary savings is in reduced number of SMS segments, otherwise just for aesthetics and time saved typing it.

We use a short domain for QR codes to stop them getting overly complex.

I quickly scrolled through the supported website list, and I haven’t recognized any familiar websites.

https://github.com/FastForwardTeam/FastForward/blob/main/doc...

All of these look super obscure.

Seems like these are web "tools" people use to monetize links, e.g. the link might be "download the new Marvel movie", you click on it and the URL is one of these sites with a parameter/ID that resolve to the URL to the "goods", but first you'd have to watch an ad. Or maybe even do complex tasks like register on some site (where someone will earn the referral bonus).

I guess a crowd-sourced database of the actual target links is a solution...

what am I missing? is there a way to algorithmically discern the original link? otherwise, all of the tracking info is still transmitted even if a 3rd party server cURLs the shortened link to return the full link back to you. what is this service actually doing that allows one to get the actual URL w/o hitting all of the things in between?

It's not marked as compatible with Firefox for Android.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com