Products · Pattern or everyday thing
URL shorteners
Raised as a usability problem by 4 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2010–2022), in 4 threads.
People raised many different problems with URL shorteners, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 4 complaints
- Can't tell from a short URL whether it's safe before clicking it2022-04-29
- Shortened links create a bad user experience and break the web2016-06-13
- Multiple redirects stall or fail on mobile connections even when destination is reachable2014-06-02
- Must click shortened link to see who authored the content2010-08-30