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Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

Not all link shorteners are evil and are destroying the web.

Here are some scenarios in which I like link shorteners:

1) Removal of the referrer (the anonymising redirect)

2) Redirects within a site when content moves, but the redirect service offers a permalink shortened URL. As only they can generate the URL you can trust that the destination is as safe as the source (the intra-site trusted redirect with vanity URLs)

3) Self-healing of the web, if a URL becomes broken the redirect service may be able to figure out or suggest a replacement, or offer a cached version of the destination or a link to the web archive (the self-healing redirect)

4) Protect users against malware and spam by cancelling a redirect if the URL is reported (the 'for the user' gateway redirect)

Not all redirects and shorteners are inherently bad. I suspect the author just dislikes the tracking side of things, but there's always http://unshort.me/

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Have you ever seen cases 2, 3, or 4 happen?

2 - Why would a site use some sort of middle layer just to ensure that links remain permanent? They could just redirect old URLs to new ones.

3 - I am aware that the owner can change the URL behind a shortened one so if they needed to they could fix "links" to their site. I have never heard of a service which claims to find out where broken redirects should now be pointing.

4 - I think they make attacks more likely. Most people's browsers will automatically follow the redirect and not give them a change to say no if they don't like the look of the URL. Yes, in theory, a user could try to report a dangerous link but I would be surprised if anyone is available to listen at these services.

> 1) Removal of the referrer (the anonymising redirect)

Should really done by a browser maybe like an attribute on a link but fair enough.

> 2) Redirects within a site when content moves, but the redirect service offers a permalink shortened URL. As only they can generate the URL you can trust that the destination is as safe as the source (the intra-site trusted redirect with vanity URLs)

Just make the original url not move...

> 3) Self-healing of the web, if a URL becomes broken the redirect service may be able to figure out or suggest a replacement, or offer a cached version of the destination or a link to the web archive (the self-healing redirect)

Ideally just better one on the browser and is done in say like chrome. I doubt there's any that were manually updated.

> 4) Protect users against malware and spam by cancelling a redirect if the URL is reported (the 'for the user' gateway redirect)

This is done in browsers anyway. And even if when would this work? Presumably they are getting this through some trusted medium otherwise what's to prevent them just getting a bad url? And if they are why not just check before?

On your 1st point: the noreferrer attribute is indeed part of the HTML5 standard.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#link-type-noreferrer

1) It can be done without shortening and obfuscating URL

2) Wouldn't call it link shortener, as redirector and target are in same administrative domain.

3) I doubt the possibility of meaningful automated fixing of arbitrary links, beyond redirecting to web archive. Which is not always best option and can be done manually or by browser addon

4) Or redirect 0.1% of traffic to attack page. This functionality should be in trusted location (browser or proxy). Screening as opt-in, especially by one providing link is useless

1, 3 and 4 almost never happen in real life.

2 is the only thing remotely useful.

#1 is used by a lot of sites, mostly torrents and the like to protect their users and themselves from obvious liability. But I even built one to help a forum that discussed philosophy and politics to help them avoid being invaded by trolls just because they discussed (and linked to) content on far-right sites, etc.

#2 was the one I couldn't think of a great example for, but thought that maybe the BBC were doing this (I have no citable source for this hunch but recall a page discussing programme identifiers and moving all existing URLs to this new structure using redirects).

#3 I agree does not happen in real life. Which is a shame.

#4 Twitter claim to do this https://support.twitter.com//entries/109623 , and I believe Google are doing this.

Edit: Citable source for #3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/radiolabs/2007/11/urls.sht... . The BBC use a URL shortener in addition to the equivalent of mod_rewrite to normalise all of their content behind permalink short URLs.

#3 actually happens in reverse: link shortener dies or the shortened link expires, while the actual URL lives on. This way, shorteners are _accelerating_ link rot.

1 happens all the time no reason to make it a "short" url though.

#1 is done by pretty much any site that lets you display "third party" content where said third-party is untrusted. Such as most webmail providers, when loading remote images, and often for links too.

(but there's no reason to do shortening)

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