23 replies

1. theAdhocracy 3 min later

   @zachleat The other one I've seen in a few places is people who reply to their own posts with the link that would otherwise be in the main post, to try and prevent the main post being rejected by recommendations.

   1. Zach Leatherman 5 min later

      @theadhocracy ugh, yes—improves engagement because folks have to click through to find the link!!

   2. Luis Villa 10 min later

      @theadhocracy @zachleat not as bad as being a nazi bar, but this is clearly the second-worst thing about xitter.

2. Ethan Marcotte 8 min later

   @zachleat This might be covered by the last two, but what about: routing all links through the platform’s own URL redirection service?

   1. Zach Leatherman 13 min later

      @beep bombastic side-eye at t.co

      1. Ethan Marcotte 18 min later

         @zachleat every day, in every way

3. Paulo Coelho Alves 8 min later

   @zachleat Not limited to social networks but having poor offboarding flows (i.e. data export, account deletion). Wrote a small piece about it a little while back: https://pcalv.es/offboarding/

4. Daniel Schulz 19 min later

   @zachleat replace link with an outbound site that redirects to said link 🚩

5. Szymon Nowicki 24 min later

   @zachleat when opening their own links there’s a modal of shame that screams you should not use the browser but an app because browser experience sucks as designed by themselves.

   1. Zach Leatherman 1 hr later

      @hey THE MODAL OF SHAME

   2. Slab Bulkhead 1 hr later

      @hey @zachleat
      https://mastodon.online/@slab_bulkhead/111308079044587950

      1. Szymon Nowicki 3 hr later

         @slab_bulkhead @zachleat LinkedIn is at least somewhat usable on web unlike what formerly was known as Reddit

         1. Slab Bulkhead 3 hr later

            @hey @zachleat
            It used to be a PWA, so everything after that is a regression to me.

6. Spencer 35 min later

   @zachleat Links are re-written to hide behind redirection, including but not limited to affiliate links, tracking links and adding tracking parameters

   1. Zach Leatherman 1 hr later

      @sphars was a big player called out for this directly?

      1. Spencer 1 hr later

         @zachleat I'm not sure if any were called out directly. But a few big sites do this or similar. Slickdeals will add a few tracking/affiliate redirects to nearly all URLs submitted. Sites that provide a easy to use "Share" button on the page (reddit/YouTube/Amazon, etc) will give you a tracking URL or parameter or link shortener.

7. Private reply 2 hr later
   1. Private reply 1 day later
8. webbureaucrat 2 hr later

   @zachleat Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but the Bluesky API requires you to generate your own link preview image and description, which is a heck of an attack vector if you're trying to get people to click on malicious links.

9. Naiyer 2 hr later

   @zachleat Clicking the link in a post in a feed opens the post in a separate page instead of link (happens with bad card link implementations)

10. Amelia Bellamy-Royds 1 day later

    @zachleat
    🚩 Black-box spam detectors that prevent users from posting a link, instead of adding a warning or whatever, but do nothing about on-site spam & misinfo.
    🚩 Special for Facebook in Canada: Blocking any links to websites deemed news content (which yes, was a response to poorly-thought-out government regulations with dubious copyright basis, but still).

    On the other side, although it's much rarer in the big networks now:
    🚩 not being able to reliably link *to* content on the site.

    1. Amelia Bellamy-Royds 1 day later

       @zachleat And then, on the other, other side, we have Mastodon, which loves links so much & lets them be so free that when someone shares a link to another fediverse post, it opens it in a new browser tab exactly as specified, on whichever website that other user was using, so that I need to right-click to copy the URL, and paste it into the search field in my logged-in web app, in order to fetch an interactive version of that post. 🙃

11. Erik Kroes ✅ 1 day later

    @zachleat Getting penalized for puttings links in your post by ThE AlGoriThm