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> If these systems ever go down, its link rot at scale Only if one's mental model is that t.co links were ever permanent. They're privately-owned obfuscator l
by shadowgovt 4y ago
> If these systems ever go down, its link rot at scale
Only if one's mental model is that t.co links were ever permanent.
They're privately-owned obfuscator links. Unless someone in the wild was building a mirror mapping, they were always doomed and never to be trusted; they knocked the "U" right out of the "URL."
- dagmx 4y agoIsn’t that true of any url though? The U is for uniformly useable, it never guarantees uniform resolution.
- shagmin 4y agoIt's even more-so true for t.co URLs though because instead of just 1 point of failure there are 2 points of failure. The original URL may work for another decade but if you don't know what the URL is behind the t.co URL and Twitter is down or whatever, then you're just out of luck.
- dagmx 4y agoI don’t think it necessarily changes the reliability of the URL. A server or dns change is similarly problematic. The only issues I have with shorteners is that they obfuscate what you’re accessing (so if it changes, it’s harder to know) and they’re a privacy issue
- lazyasciiart 4y agoIt doesn’t matter what my mental model is if I’m trying to follow links posted by someone else.
- shadowgovt 4y agoThat's what I'm saying. We must reframe our mental models so that everything on Twitter is thought of as temporary. None of it is, or really was ever, stable.