You don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon!
All links on Mastodon count as 23 characters towards your post limit, no matter how long the links actually are.
Link shortener services like bit.ly, t.co etc track users who click on their links. This is really bad for privacy. If you use link shorteners on Mastodon, people may assume you are just doing it for tracking purposes.
More info at https://fedi.tips/you-dont-need-link-shorteners-on-mastodon
@feditips And while they are only visually 23 characters, they are read in full by screen readers so actually suck
the raw link situation on mastodon is one of the worst parts of it and i hate seeing it touted as having "removed any practical use" for link shorteners, when actually, it "removed any practical use for link shorteners i personally think exist"
my personal preference is having plain text context of the link given before a warning a raw link follows
so, something like
the wikipedia page for HTML (raw link) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML
but there's no clean solution at all without hyperlinks
@Lachesis there is actually an similar attribute for hyperlinks and it’s super helpful when used but rarely is - it can add more context to the reason for the link and what to expect when taking it beyond the destination
it's the "title" attribute for <a> (needed to verify)
my screenreader is set to a priority of title -> hyperlinked text -> URL and chooses the highest priority on the list that exists
@feditips
this standards page should give you an idea of what I mean (raw link follows) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H33.html
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Lachesis