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Comment by pj | Hacker News Reader

I think really, because I care about the future of the web. I know there are myriad problems with url shorteners and they are jeopardizing the future of the web. My website is just one little piece of it, I know, but education is grand. I think people, when presented with rational reasons that benefit us all, will listen to them.

The person linking to your content is interested more than anything in bringing users to your content. If you put up a page that prevents them from doing that, then they'll use another link, or not link to you at all.

Really, it's about education and education comes at a cost. If you are educating, then you aren't focusing on coding or something else.

On the page where the javascript redirects, you could say, "Thank you very much for linking to my content. I think it's great that you appreciate what I have written, but please understand that the method you are using to link to it is not good and here's why: yada yada yada..."

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You really think that being able to get a shortened URL to put in a post on Twitter is such a threat to the future of the Web that you need to, essentially, implement a huge "fuck you for trying to visit my site" message?

If that's the case (and believe me, I've read Schachter's bit, and many of the zillions of "me too" posts following it, and so know the arguments inside and out at this point), I really don't have anything to say to you except "congratulations on your new job in the newspaper industry, I'm sure you'll fit right in".

Indeed.

I guess the main points were:

1) The shortener ought to be owned by the publisher; at least then the document and the identifier are connected within the same organization/entity/whatever. At least that way if the URL is lost, the document probably is too.

2) The shortening is necessary due to design decisions by twitter (and poor ones, at that.) Changing these in the right way could make the entire problem dissapear.

Punishing users is probably not the right way.

Well, URL shortening has value outside of Twitter. There are plenty of services which generate absolutely enormous URLs which would be a pain to sling around on their own, and being able to get a quick, short version to refer to is awfully handy (think "directions on Google Maps").

And before Twitter, that's the only kind of thing these services were used for. They were hardly prevalent, and they certainly weren't "necessary" in any sense. The downside just didn't really matter that much.

Now that's starting to change. By analogy: there's a legitimate use for DDT, and when I go camping once a year I happily buy a bottle of it, but that doesn't make spraying it out of a firehose around cities a good idea.

You're blowing this so far out of proportion that I'm not sure it's possible to have a reasonable discussion with you.

You really believe that people who think heavy widespread use of url shorteners is bad for the web are too unreasonable to even speak to? Dude... alright, whatever.

You compared the use of shortened URLs to spraying poison out of a firehose. Can't quite put my finger on it, but yeah, I think that's a bit unreasonable.

You do know that they did actually used to spray DDT out of a firehose, right? That that wasn't just some random bullshit I made up on the spot, it's actually a case where we did wrong by taking something that's okay in moderation and trying to use it in large quantities? Do I really think url shorteners are as bad as spraying poison out of a firehose? No, but it was a fucking analogy.

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