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Comment by tdavis | Hacker News Reader

Firstly, the hypocrisy of a URL shortener blocking another URL shortener's links because they can't be verified is hilarious. Secondly, if a person goes as far as to shorten every link they copy from their browser and use a Twitter client that shortens all links regardless of length, I hardly think they have much room to complain about the system they're fully backing.

What did she expect to happen? That Bitly would concern themselves with her reputation? If you want a URL shortener who cares, your only option is to run your own. Bitly's only concern is for their business, nothing more.

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In this case, even running your own URL shortener will not help in any way. Bit.ly blocks any already-shortened URL. Whether it's xrl.in, tinyurl or your own.

You can only control your own shortened URL but you have no control when people re-tweet it and pass it through Bit.ly. Which then flags it as harmful.

You can only control your own shortened URL but you have no control when people re-tweet it and pass it through Bit.ly. Which then flags it as harmful.

So bitly, a URL-shortening service, is blocking other shortened URLs because they deem shortened URLs harmful? And here I thought the stupidity of twitter and it's ecosystem of useless URL-shorteners had an actual limit.

Only in the sense of the number of characters provided to perpetrate said stupidity.

tweet.im keeps tinyurl-ing my xrl.us URLs. The result is actually longer.

I suspect the closest to a solution here is a "don't shorten this unless it'd be X% shorter as a result" type flag for shortening APIs and then beat client authors over the head until they all pass the flag.

And then beat client users over the head until they all upgrade.

And then ... er ... never mind. I think I'll go stick my head in an oven now.

> if a person goes as far as to shorten every link they copy from their browser and use a Twitter client that shortens all links regardless of length

This is not what happened. One person shortened the link from their browser, and tweeted that link. A second person re-tweeted that link, and their Twitter client re-shortened the already-shortened URL.

The blogger reports that bit.ly updated their page, to explain why a link may be disallowed. He doesn't accept their explanation, but it does make a lot of sense:

  - Some URL-shorteners re-use their links, so bit.ly can't
    guarantee the validity of this link.
  - Some URL-shorteners allow their links to be edited, 
    so bit.ly can't tell where this link will lead you.
  - Spam and malware is very often propagated by exploiting
    these loopholes, neither of which bit.ly allows for

It seems a little shaky to me, because: 1) bit.ly could reject the link at submission time, instead of at the time of usage. This would eliminate the whole problem. 2) bit.ly could follow the link, unshorten it, and then shorten the original link. This would eliminate these concerns.

It makes some shallow sense, but on deeper investigation it's anti-competitive bullshit that is not much better than the scams they claim to be protecting you against.

Think about it, since when is bit.ly the arbiter of link safety? Does bit.ly provide you a guarantee that they will not ever link to malware? Of course not! They could not afford the liability on that. Anyone could post a malicious link anywhere. Any page can set up a 301 redirect any time. People can post malware links anywhere any time.

What's going on here is that bit.ly is breaking links arbitrarily, and doing it to third parties without their consent or even knowledge. It might be possible that a credible legal case could be mounted against bit.ly on this basis. Quite simply, it is neither their right nor their responsibility to be the link police of the internet, and it also is far from within their power. These guys are overstepping in a major way.

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