Enshittification is coming:
Beginning in the next month, when users click Bitly links or QR Codes, they may see a preview page prior to being directed to the destination URL. The page includes information about the link destination and may include advertising.
Hah!
Companies tried to make this a thing 20 years ago, and people just dropped the middle-men like hot potatoes. Bitly thinks it’ll be different this time because people have become used to using their service, but all of the pressures that had people using link shorteners in the first place have already fallen by the wayside.
This probably isn’t going to end well for them.
I remember blackberry using bitly links in their developer emails in 2013, and at the time it was possible to see the stats of any link by just adding “+” at the end of the link (now requires authentication or maybe only paid users can lock that page)
It was dismaying to see that it got only 50 clicks or so lol