You don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon. All links count as 23 characters towards your posts's maximum size, no matter how long the link really is.
By avoiding link shorteners, you are also protecting people's privacy and reducing the risk of link rot.
(There is a bug on the official iPhone/iPad app that means links are counted as their true length instead of 23, which is yet another reason to switch to a third party app such as Ice Cubes or Mona or Ivory.)
p.s. People asking "Why 23 characters?", it's because a long time ago on Twitter links were counted as 23 characters by Twitter replacing all posted links with their own link shorteners (which meant Twitter could track what people clicked). These shorteners were always 23 characters long.
Mastodon provided a more privacy-friendly alternative to this by leaving the links intact without a shortener, but still only counted them as 23 characters.
p.p.s. Google announced today that they are shutting down their link shortener service goo.gl. From 2025, goo.gl shortened links will no longer work:
https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-links-will-no-longer-be-available/
This is why link shorteners cause link rot, because eventually link shortener services close down, even ones run by megacorporations, and all their links break.
Your link will survive a lot longer if you avoid using shorteners. You don't need shorteners on Mastodon, all links count as 23 characters anyway.
@FediTips Flipping heck.
I used goo.gl a lot back in the day.
I often use link shorteners in email. but mail services often use link lengtheners, which which means you have screenfuls of links, and makes it look like spam, which of course it is, so it gets dumped in the "Junk and Suspicious Mail" folder where I never see it.
But at least I've never used a Google link shortener.
Yes although it wasn’t completely in order to track user clicks
It was also because each tweet was much shorter in maximum allowed length (this goes back to SMS), and every keystroke (character) was useful while link length was, and still is, hugely variable
(This also matters to a lesser extent on the fediverse, where post length can be much longer while still being limited, but this way of counting makes it moot)
@FediTips I still hate the mastodon limit. It's a bit too short imo. Some people love it. I still find it limited.
I can't find an easy way to increase the 500 char limit in my mastodon instance as a site owner.
Friendica is great!
...or a Glitch Mastodon or Hometown Mastodon instance, they allow the admins to easily adjust the limit too.
Glitch should be much easier to migrate to, and you can migrate back to vanilla if you change your mind.
There's deliberately no easy way of increasing it, unfortunately, because the lead developer didn't like the idea of larger limits:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/5697#issuecomment-345078582
...they could technically do this very easily, but they choose not to 😞
Glitch is great 👍
If we can disregard the link length and count it as an arbitrary 23 characters..... why not count it as 0 characters? Why have a limit at all?
Some Fediverse server types don't have a limit (WordPress, Friendica etc).
Some unofficial variations of Mastodon have an adjustable limit (Glitch Mastodon, Hometown Mastodon etc).
But the lead developer of the official version of Mastodon just prefers a 500 character limit and refuses to allow it to be easily adjusted:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/5697#issuecomment-345078582
@FediTips I wanted to see if I can cheese that like this... apparently not lol
I could cheese the character counter but not the submission
@kev broadly speaking, "cheesing" something means achieving a goal in a way that's not intended but doesn't technically doesn't break any rules.
Not entirely sure of the origin of the term but I presume it's called cheese because cheese has holes in it, and you just found a loophole to achieve your goal.
It may also apply to strategies and methods that technically achieve the goal in an easy way that's very inefficient or falls apart easily which is more the case here.
Decision by the #Mastodon developers.
Maybe inspired by
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=23_enigma&diffonly=true
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_(film)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker)
or just some kind of "average" length of an URL...
... or whatever... ;-)
@stevenaleach I think for text that long I'd consider a blog and linking to that.
Also 2000 is the content of about four posts in a thread, which I'd say is still pretty reasonable.
Opinion, of course 
It is an arbitrary number which seemed to appeal to the lead dev. His explanation for hard coding 500 characters as the limit is here:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/5697#issuecomment-345078582
Is there an existing issue for this? I have searched the existing issues Current Behavior A post is artificially limited by counting full length of url; if I post on the web app instead there is no...
>(There is a bug on the official iPhone/iPad app that means links are counted as their true length instead of 23, which is yet another reason to switch to a third party app such as Ice Cubes or Mona or Ivory.)
Or just use the webpage. Seriously, the mobile web page for Mastodon works great. Unlike corporate sites that intentionally make the mobile page bad to cajole you into using the app, Mobile Web Mastodon is HIGHLY functional.
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