
Confirmed: Digg Just Hijacked Your Twitter Links - tortilla
http://mashable.com/2009/07/19/digg-twitter-links/
======
jonknee
And here I thought just showing the toolbar and hijacking the URL was a scammy
move... This has now become a textbook case of what is wrong with URL
shorteners. Your links are at someone else's mercy. Even "reputable" firms
like Digg can abuse your trust (I guess the investor's are leaning on them big
time these days).

Luckily this is easy to fix going forward: before sharing a link make sure it
isn't using Digg's domain. If it is, resolve it and send the original. Rinse,
repeat.

~~~
lacker
_Before sharing a link make sure it isn't using Digg's domain. If it is,
resolve it and send the original._

Well, but the Digg short links are just redirecting to other Digg pages. So
it's not straightforward to resolve it.

~~~
jonknee
You'll have to visit the link and copy the URL in the linked headline of the
resulting Digg story. That's better than making people you send the link to
have to jump through the same hoop.

------
tortilla
Incredibly short-sighted decision by Digg. Maybe they should hire a Chief
Common Sense Officer.

~~~
pj
Our company has a CSC: Chief Sanity Checker

Sometimes in a startup, people can get crazy. I love having a level head on
the team. I mean, it takes passion and exhuberance and a little bit of crazy
to make it all work, but you don't want to go over the edge.

It's all kind of coming into a fever pitch. It seems like the internet is
losing the people who understand what makes sense. I think it's gotten to the
point that the ad based models and the social networking and the big
investments with no revenue are going to start scrambling to stay alive and we
are going to see a lot more decisions that, from the outside, seem ridiculous.

From the inside though, there are few options and these companies are going to
have to go with something.

The eternal september is a constant search for a new january.

------
nazgulnarsil
please please don't bring headline tags to hacker news. I hate seeing
"confirmed:", "breaking:" and all that crap.

~~~
cdr
I have no idea why you're getting upvoted so much, or really why you're
complaining about this submission - "Confirmed:" is the title of the article.

~~~
mkyc
There's no rule that says we should use the same vapid title here. I yearn for
the day when I come to HN and find that either the submitters or the editors
have decided to spoil every teaser and ReMove Those Damned Flow Impeding
Capitals.

From "Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global" to "Hardware bulk prevents
Japanese cellphone globalization". Throw on a subtitle! Don't worry, I know
where to find the actual article title. Sure, don't change titles to something
weird and unrecognizable, but half the time I have no idea what I'm in for.
Spoil it for me, summarize the whole damn thing in the title if you can.

~~~
Pistos2
I don't have a problem with this thread's title, but I have noticed that a
non-negligible number of HN titles of late have been poorly chosen (i.e. fail
to convey the gist of what is being linked to).

------
alex_c
Kevin Rose claims he had no idea about this:

<http://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/2729862918>

 _just now reading the digg short url discussion, I was not aware this changed
and will check in on it tomorrow (was on vacation for 2 weeks)_

~~~
kyro
Apparently Kevin Rose knew about this, contrary to what he tweeted. From a TC
comment referring to Leo Laporte interviewing Rose on TWIT:

Leo Laporte had Digg co-founder Kevin Rose on his show and asked him about
this. You can see it on Twit Live – the Diggbar discussion starts at the 11:26
mark. Here is an excerpt:

* (Laporte gives Rose the background from an article on Techcrunch)

* Laporte: Is that true?

* Rose: That’s a good question.

* Laporte: You don’t know?

* Rose: I’ve been gone for 2 weeks so I don’t know what got pushed, what code got pushed and how it functions but my last understanding is that what we wanted to do is have it so that if you click on a Digg URL it takes you to the Digg stories so you can Digg it. Rather than providing a short URL service that just forwards and does redirection we would just do a URL service just for Digg articles. Just like the same way that Techcrunch does “techcrunch slash 85374″ – if you go to that you’re not going to go to some other site you’re going to go to techcrunch. That’s the story.

* Laporte: So you’re backing off on the original idea which is a general URL shortening service…

* Rose: Correct.

~~~
jonknee
1) Advertise a new URL shortening service
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GTCeQP1eMc>)

2) Wait for new links to be created

3) Without telling anyone stop being a URL shortening service and keep all the
links to yourself

4) Deny you knew it went on but then admit you knew exactly what went on

...

5) Profit?

------
mcav
This is a prime example of the pitfalls of shortened URLs. Short URLs are
pointers -- don't rely on them to point to the same thing (or a valid thing)
forever.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
Real URLs have no guarantee of that either. <http://whitehouse.com> doesn't
get me the same sexy pics it did 10 years ago.

That aside, you're right that an extra layer in there just adds more room for
things to go wrong.

------
troels
Simple solution: Use actual URLs.

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mikedouglas
So the question has to be asked, what does twitter get from a "vibrant"
marketplace of url shorteners? Digg is only the first to try and use the links
to their advantage. These other services are going to need to pay the bills,
and we'll start seeing more and more of these stories.

They've got the capital, twitter either needs to buy a url shortener, or at
least play kingmaker and push one service.

~~~
mustpax
They should just fold the functionality into their API. Add an optional URL
field to each tweet, and then within the message the URL can be referenced
using Markdown like syntax: [link body][1]. Only the link body text would
count against your character count, so you get a free URL.

They could even sell the click-through analytics to their large customers.

URL shorteners are a hack, there's no reason to encourage them any further.

~~~
potatolicious
Precisely. I have no idea why we can't do this - Twitter already supports #
and @, there's no reason they can't support URLs in the same manner.

------
jrockway
A link that says "digg.com" in the URL goes to digg.com? SAY IT AIN'T SO!!!!!

Anyway, there is an easy solution to this problem. It's called using any one
of the other 100 million URL shorteners.

~~~
mahmud
They advertised the service as a URL shortner; i.e. following a digg shortened
URL should redirect original URL, not drop me in a digg landing page.

<Dan Rather>

    
    
      When I throw a tennis ball at a wall I expect it to bounce back. 
      I would be frightened if the ball sticks to the wall.
    

</Dan Rather>

~~~
jrockway
The expression "slow news day" is applicable to both stories.

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zitterbewegung
This is a really bad decision from digg. I suspect that people will start
moving away from Digg as a url shortening service now. The diggbar was bad
enough encapsulating the content in a frame.

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steilpass
So digg.com is not a typical url shortener anymore. So what? I've never used
it that way. Now if you see a digg.com link it will take you to digg. You know
what you get. Use it that way or don't.

------
joshu
Cough.

~~~
joshu
Oh please. I totally called this.

------
ivanstojic
Here we go again :-\

------
jgilliam
I just started an act.ly twitter petition to put some more pressure on them:
<http://act.ly/9u>

Tweet: petition @digg to stop hijacking twitter links. no bait and switch!
<http://act.ly/9u> Retweet to sign #digg

