Conversation
Notices
-
perhaps it's one of those misfeatures that get copied without thinking, by imitating surveillance capitalists
-
surveillance as a feature
-
@lxo I have not seen the context, but if you've seen #Soapbox, you'll see AP #Fediverse software that imitates #Twitter misfeatures in an attempt to make the network familiar and popular.
I think many of the Fediverse's biggest irritants are such misfeatures applied where they do not fit.
-
context was url shortening in links (as opposed to displayed text associated with links). the only reason to ever do that is for user tracking and surveillance. f*k is even encrypting links nowadays, so that users have no choice but to go through it to reach the linked-to page, but url shorteners are hardly any different. url shorteners are nice to print or take note of short urls, but no benefit if you come across the link on a computer where you can follow it without having to type it in, or even copying it
-
Ah. I partially agree. Mastodon and Friendica shorten URLs by truncating the display with "...". By defaulting to sending people somewhere other than what they can see, they present all the same danger of tracking, surveillance, and spam. Thus far, I know of no Masto or ~F instance that actually misuses it, but just because it isn't happening yet does not mean it will never happen.
This very GS instance converts longer URLs to ".../URL/sequentialnumber", which is also a shortener. Some instance somewhere could eventually be configured to track clicks on such links. Though I think in our little corner of the Internet, tracking is most likely going to come with a user posting a tracking link directly.
Alexandre Oliva
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}
All Federati Nu: Federated N-series GNU Social content and data are available under the