Enshittification is coming:
Beginning in the next month, when users click 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.
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Short links are bullshit anyway. Don’t obfuscate where you’re sending me, that’s sketch. That’s phishing email behavior. Just because you don’t want me to erase all the tracking bullshit from url. Soon I won’t be able to anyway because most sites are starting to embed it into the url anyway. Fuck you and fuck the internet
There are sometimes reason to use it. It's shorter, so easier to remember. It's also easier to send in text. I use a selfhosted shortener, so I can use these as dynamic links and can change the target if I need to while keeping the shortlink the same. But I agree that most don't use it for respectable reasons.
I remember seeing a zero width shortener, which uses invisible characters to encode your link.
It was useful way back but idr why? Like copying and pasting was always a thing, I think it was commonly used in yt videos with piracy links and they werent in the description.
It's useful if you want someone to copy a URL from a physical medium, so they don't have to copy a huge URL.
They're useful for printed media
"Find more info at bitly/event" instead of "find more info at facebook.com/unnecessarilylongurlthatnobodyisgoingtotype"
Or for a qr code where it needs to be small and somehow your URL is too long
But yes, relying on a third party company for something that needs to last a long time isn't really smart. There are many books that have online content now inaccessible because they used a link shortener that's dead or that doesn't let you update the redirection without paying a ransom (need to pay $120/year to bitly if you need to change the redirection)