I'll never use a URL shortener again.
Shortened or not, they change, disappear, get redirected, all the time. There was once an idea that a URL was (or should be) a permanent reference, but to the extent that was ever true it's long in the past.
The closest thing we might have to that is an Internet Archive link.
Otherwise, don't cite URLs. Cite authors, titles, keywords, and dates, and maybe a search engine will turn up the document, if it exists at all.
Fwiw, I wrote and hosted my own URL shortener, also embeddable in applications.
- Tinyurl.com, launched in 2002, currently 23 years old
- Urly.it, launched in 2009, currently 16 years old
- Bitly.com, also launched in 2009
So yes, some services survived a long time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier
I think I might be doing a self plug here, so pardon me but I am pretty sure that I can create something like a link shortener which can last essentially permanent, it has to do with crypto (I don't adore it as an investment, I must make it absolutely clear)
But basically I have created nanotimestamps which can embed some data in nano blockchain and that data could theoretically be a link..
Now the problem is that the link would atleast either be a transaction id which is big or some sort of seed passphrase...
So no, its not as easy as some passphrase but I am pretty sure that nano isn't going to dissolve, last time I checked it has 60 nodes and anyone can host a node and did I mention all of this for completely free.. (I mean, there is no gas fees in nano, which is why I picked it)
I am not associated with the nano team and it would actually be sort of put their system on strain if we do actually use it in this way but I mean their system allows for it .. so why not cheat the system
Tldr: I am pretty sure that I can build one which can really survive a really long time, decentralized based link shortener but the trade off is that the shortened link might actually become larger than original link. I can still think of a way to actually shorten it though
Like I just thought that nano has a way to catalogue transactions in time so its theoretically possible that we can catalogue some transactions from time, and so basically its just the nth number of transaction and that n could be something like 1000232
and so it could be test.org/1000232 could lead to something like youtube rickroll. Could theoretically be possible, If literally anybody is interested, I can create a basic prototype since I am just so proud really that I created some decent "innovation" in some space that I am not even familiar with (I ain't no crypto wizard)
Data stored in a blockchain isn't any more permanent than data stored in a well-seeded SQLite torrent: it's got the same failure modes (including "yes, technically there are a thousand copies… somewhere; but we're unlikely to get hold of one any time in the next 3 years").
But yes, you have correctly used the primitives to construct a system. (It's hardly your fault people undersell the leakiness of the abstraction.)
But I think compared to sqlite torrent, the part about crypto might be the fact that since there's people's real money involved (for the worse or for the better) it then becomes of absolute permanence that data stored in blockchain becomes permanent.. and like I said, I can use that 60 nodes for absolutely free due to absolutely 0 gas fees compared to Sqlite torrent.
If you want to use blockchain for this, I advise properly using a dedicated new blockchain, not spamming the Nano network.
The funny part is that I was thinking about creating a dedicated new blockchain but I felt "spamming" (honestly fair critique) was easier and more practical and currently more decentralized.
With the system I am presenting, I think that it can be possible to have a website like redirect.com/<some-gibberish> and even if redirect.com goes down then yes that link would stop working but what redirect.com is doing under the hood can be done by anybody so that being said,
it can be possible for someone to archive redirect.com main site which might give instructions which can give a recent list on github or some other place which can give a list of top updated working web gateways
And so anybody can go to archive.org, see that's what they meant and try it or maybe we can have some sort of slug like redirect.com/block/<random-gibberish> and then maybe people can then have it be understood to block meaning this is just a gateway (a better more niche word would help)
But still, at the end of the day there is some way of using that shortened link forever thus being permanent in some sense.
Like Imagine that someone uses goo.gl link for some extremely important document and then somehow it becomes inaccessible for whatever use case and now... Its just gone?
I think that a way to recover that could really help. But honestly, I am all in for feedback and since its 0 fees and as such I would most likely completely open source it and neither am I involved in this crypto project, I most likely will earn nothing like ever even if I do make this, but I just hope that I could help in making the internet a little less like a graveyard with dead links and help in that aspect.
The same would have to be done for the node running the service, and it too has been prefunded with a sitting balance.
Granted, there still exist failure modes, and so the bus factor needs to be more than one, but the above setup can in all probability easily ride out a few decades with the original person forgetting about it. In principle, a prefunded LLM with access to appropriate tooling and a headless browser can even be put in charge to address common administrative concerns.
2) you don't actually want things to be permanent - users will inevitably shorten stuff strings didn't mean to / want to, so there needs to be a way to scrub them.
I'll never use a Google product again.
As we already have a PostgreSQL database server, thecost of running this is extremely low, and we aren't concerned about GDPR (etc) issues with using a third-party site.
I don't know if anyone should use a URL shortener or not ... but if you do ...
"Oh By"[1] will be around in thirty years.
Links will not be "purged". Users won't be tracked. Ads won't be served.
[1] https://0x.co
How can you (or I) know that?
What normal person would find this glove and result in it being returned to its owner? Even if "0x.co" was written too, I think most people wouldn't understand it to be a URL.