Bitly injecting ads into shortened links | Hacker News Reader

Bitly injecting ads into shortened links

social.jvns.ca

19 pointsColinWright19 comments

So the solution is to pre-scrape all bitly URL expansions by brute force and seed the torrent so that someone else can build a librebit.ly ?

And then insert ads in your service to cover expenses. It's imgur all over again.

Deleted this post because I don't think a random screenshot from my email is a good source for people to refer to. A better source might be the bitly terms of service: https://bitly.com/pages/terms-of-service (1.4 Destination Preview)

> "Bitly is now using ads on free accounts to continue delivering free plans at no cost to our users. As part of the update, we introduced an interstitial page that includes a preview of the link destination and an ad. If you prefer an ad-free experience, you can upgrade to one of our paid plans here." :

https://support.bitly.com/hc/en-us/articles/32874287800333-W...

Using a gerund is a touch false. The evidence provided is a change in the ToS from bitly:

  Upcoming changes to our Terms
  of Service
  We are making some adjustments to our Terms of Service
  and Privacy Policy that will affect you as a user of Bitly's
  free plan.
  Beginning in the next month, when your audience interacts
  with your Bitly links or QR Codes, they may see a preview
  page prior to being directed to the destination URL. The
  page includes information about the link destination and
  may include advertising.
  As a free Bitly user, you can remove the preview page
  experience from your links and QR Codes at any time by
  selecting a paid Bitly plan.

The original link is dead but I have no reason not to trust what you're saying. Is this for new links or links from all time?

ALL links.

But you can turn this off for links if you are using paid account. This setting is unavailable for free accounts.

that is indeed the email they sent out and it definitely suggests all links will get interstitial junk.

Links from non-paid users will get an interstitial.

"inject" is the wrong word too. They aren't modifying links or linked pages.

It's a free service that displays ads before showing free content. Like most other free services.

Flagged the misleading title.

"inject [in to the redirection process]" is clear and accurate

Previous submissions on the topic, although none were picked up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42854927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43024328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42996300

A service which offers something for free with no obvious form of monetisation needs to be treated as a red flag.

Bitly always had monetization via paid plans. Over the years they have cannibalized their free tier, however.

Great time to spin up your own URL shortener. I dumped bit.ly long ago, and have my own that I can control.

Great time to stop using URL shorteners.

Just use is.gd, it has lasted a long time without any enshittification.

sad but it makes sense, nothing is free.

when a service is free or too cheap to be economically viable, they’re just trying to get a huge userbase, get rid of the competition and then when they’re a monopoly or almost one they raise prices or do something to become profitable.

of course there’s exceptions like with mom and pop ventures but big companies will get ‘sponsored’ (invested in) by already very rich venture capitals or oil rich countries like the UAE and in return for a big stake in the company they get a certain amount of money to ‘blow’ on getting new users.

Does anyone know of a corollary to web3isgoinggreat.com that compiles all these instances of enshittification?

It would be fascinating to read through a crowdsourced list of ways in which SaaS companies have altered the deal.

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