Fediverse memes

So either they are solving problems the most common browsers are solving or they are tracking clicks to sell user data. Somehow the latter sounds more likely, especially since they have no reliable source of income yet.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just scan the original post for harmful links?

Unless that location is a really old website like zombo.com or maybe tane.us

sometimes follow social media to a second location.

So much for the claims I read that it would be a more open platform.

There's no profit in an open platform. You only build these things to mine data.

you’re right that this is likely to be used for tracking crap, but i wouldn’t write off the concept as only for that

for example, home assistant has https://my.home-assistant.io/ where you can set your home assistant URL and doc links (etc) link there, and then that site in turn automatically redirects to the correct place on your local home assistant

this could be used similarly by the fediverse: imagine my.join-lemmy.org where lemmy instances you’re not logged into redirected you to, which then in turn redirects to your home instance… that way, links across the web to lemmy would automatically redirect to your home instance

perhaps it’s not something that’s worth the trade off - centralising in some ways - but in federated platforms on the web it’s far from a write-off

This is technically incorrect (the best kind of incorrect?). Bluesky is open source, with the exception of the discover feed algorithm, which they claim must remain secret to prevent it being manipulated. There are open-source replacements for that feed available, so it's open enough that it is theoretically possible to spin up a Bluesky replacement, albeit impossibly expensive.

Coming at it from another angle though, the product in any commercial social media product is you, so in that sense you're right: the product is not open source. Either way, open source code is not some panacea that erases all risk of commodifying its users. Bluesky is a great example because while it is open source, that in absolutely no way prevents them from tracking their users.

Most companies implement for malicious link control. They can actively scan as needed and they can prevent users from going to any links deemed malicious. It also adds tracking for amount of clicks on a specific URL. There are more nefarious uses that others have stated redirection for paid links to them and user profile building for ad targeting

I'm thinking they'd want to control misuse of the platform. Someone links malware and it is shared enough, they may want to be able to intercept that. At least, that's what I'd want to be able to do.

It's to get around a bug on some platforms where the Referer header isn't set properly. Basically when you click the link in the app (maybe other platforms too idk), it can't set the Referer, so website statistics can't know what came from bsky. This was in their changelog. It used to already work correctly on desktop, though.

So far no one seems to know what the real reason is. That is why there is a lot of guessing.

Not sure why they have it go through a redirect like that; you can just trap click events and do whatever with them, including sending tracking info back before sending the user to the new page.

Probably so bluesky can get affiliate money, either changing affiliate links with their own a'la honey or just tracking them to report to advertisers how much traffic is going through their platform to garner deals.

In other words, money

You can use pattern checker to automatically replace the URL with the original one.

"bsky": {
    "regex": "https?:\/\/go.bsky.app\/redirect\\?u=(https?.*?)",
    "replacement": "$1",
    "decode": "true",
    "enabled": "true",
    "automatic": "true"
  }

(it's possible they will add more parameters in future, in which case you may want to restrict the selection to not be essentially anything after u=)

FYI, you need to insert an additional Return ¿ or the text will align with your image's left-hand side and throw off the comment formatting. The extra line of space will either place the text above or below the image instead of on its hip.

URL Checker is an awesome that many more should be using if they're not. It can also remove trackers, redirects and other shenanigans from links before committing to the click

The best part is that if you inspect elements, it still shows as the original link. They only generate the go link after you clicked.