This makes a lot of sense if public participation is actually desired. Links need to be short, snappy, and memorable so they're easy to either type into a smartphone on the spot or be recalled at some point later when one has a spare moment. This kind of link is also more likely to spread via word of mouth.
Traditional link shorteners only meet one of those requirements. Random strings aren't going to be remembered and the chances that they'll be mistyped is substantially higher.
Given how untrustworthy the most popular social media providers have proven to be, it's madness that so many politicians and government accounts still use things like Xitter or facebook as their primary communication medium.
Even ignoring the political misinformation that is rampant on these platforms and often promoted widely by the platform because it is inflammatory and gets lots of engagement, they also severely punish posts that link away from the site, which public safety and government accounts obviously need to do. It's a hazard for public safety info to be targeted primarily at a feed designed to bury it. Even if you're following those accounts on Xitter or facebook, they're effectively never going to show you their posts.
A little sad that it's often posting screenshots of X posts there. At least the screenshot has alt text, but if you're doing alt text, why a screenshot in the first place?
As I understand it, Bsky doesn't punish posts for including a link off-site, and doesn't require you to be logged in to view it. Whether they'll continue to behave in a responsible way forever remains to be seen, I guess.
The great thing about Bsky is that feeds can be user-run (and the for you feed is a great success story). So if Bluesky Inc. wants to derank links on their discover feed, there are a lot of user driven feed options to counteract that
this is how the government should communicate with its people - push out via all social media channels but always link back to something everyone can access!
hopefully this stuff gets pushed out via email too? not enough open protocols to receive pushes from otherwise
The problem with these short pithy urls is that their lifetime is limited - there's only so many initiative names and they're going to collide and be removed and replaced.
Cool uris don't change[1]. Short, readable uris are great but they should be merely redirecs, and the mapping should be version controlled and exposed to the public as an immutable history.
Easily solved by adding an interstitial whenever a URI becomes replaced and is therefore no longer immutable, and showing the history of what it used to point to as well (in case you're coming along from an old link). By default, after 5 seconds, it could redirect to the current destination.
The public doesn't need an immutable history of URLs, they need URLs they can freaking type. When you've got pages people actually care to go to, then you can create your museum of URLs.
The lifetime of the programs they link to is also limited. There's no earthly reason, when running a website in 2026, to care what Tim Berners-Lee thought about the aesthetics and purposes of URLs in 1998. It's a nice nostalgia session, but "cool urls don't change" is ironically short-sighted and has lead to well-meaning dolts embedding GUIDs and other such constructs into them. The entire concept was posited prior to the advent of on-screen phone keyboards, which make typing long heavily-punctuated urls a pain in the ass. There are a thousand reasons to salute this document and let it recede into the mists of time.
A municipal website should be useful to the citizens who want to use it. This is a great example of doing something useful with the web.
This seems so amateur hour. The way the links work in this post are broken on mobile, and the first one I managed to make work was full of trivial grammatical errors.
> click-to-cancel combat-antisemitism EndStreetHarassment jingle knicks knicksgame3 rental-ripoff Summer
I'd like to believe that the diversity, equity, and inclusion of Scheme, Pascal, and C stdlib naming conventions here is intentional.
Flame wars. City council will soon debate two vs four spaces between traffic cones.
This makes a lot of sense if public participation is actually desired. Links need to be short, snappy, and memorable so they're easy to either type into a smartphone on the spot or be recalled at some point later when one has a spare moment. This kind of link is also more likely to spread via word of mouth.
Traditional link shorteners only meet one of those requirements. Random strings aren't going to be remembered and the chances that they'll be mistyped is substantially higher.
At least some traditional link shorterners let you choose the string.
This is similar to Singapore’s https://go.gov.sg links.
Functions exactly like tinyurl, generally used by public officers for the various programmes/initiatives from the ministries and agencies.
it would be nice if they added a link preview
not sure why they have never done that before
The meta on this post is that the minimalist blog design by iamwillwang.com is itself really cool. Great work!
People are discovering go links from first principles.
Mamdani+ his team are genius at PR
In an age where cameras are everywhere, all one has to do for good PR is good.
Only if you own the camera system, otherwise they won't publish the video of you doing good
It's an url shortener. I implemented 3 of these this year and nobody is calling me a genius.
Because a genius would have only needed to implement a single one this year
Given how untrustworthy the most popular social media providers have proven to be, it's madness that so many politicians and government accounts still use things like Xitter or facebook as their primary communication medium.
Even ignoring the political misinformation that is rampant on these platforms and often promoted widely by the platform because it is inflammatory and gets lots of engagement, they also severely punish posts that link away from the site, which public safety and government accounts obviously need to do. It's a hazard for public safety info to be targeted primarily at a feed designed to bury it. Even if you're following those accounts on Xitter or facebook, they're effectively never going to show you their posts.
https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov
A little sad that it's often posting screenshots of X posts there. At least the screenshot has alt text, but if you're doing alt text, why a screenshot in the first place?
As I understand it, Bsky doesn't punish posts for including a link off-site, and doesn't require you to be logged in to view it. Whether they'll continue to behave in a responsible way forever remains to be seen, I guess.
The great thing about Bsky is that feeds can be user-run (and the for you feed is a great success story). So if Bluesky Inc. wants to derank links on their discover feed, there are a lot of user driven feed options to counteract that
NYC could also pipe their own PDS right into NYC mobile apps, email notifications, etc. in this context.
I like click to cancel. Should have a year at least in url
this is how the government should communicate with its people - push out via all social media channels but always link back to something everyone can access!
hopefully this stuff gets pushed out via email too? not enough open protocols to receive pushes from otherwise
What if I told you there’s an existing protocol for doing Really Simple Syndication?
Sorry, we're on the wrong timeline. The worse one, in fact.
The problem with these short pithy urls is that their lifetime is limited - there's only so many initiative names and they're going to collide and be removed and replaced.
Cool uris don't change[1]. Short, readable uris are great but they should be merely redirecs, and the mapping should be version controlled and exposed to the public as an immutable history.
[1] https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
The internet isn't an append-only archive. It changes quite frequently in fact. Sorry dawg.
Easily solved by adding an interstitial whenever a URI becomes replaced and is therefore no longer immutable, and showing the history of what it used to point to as well (in case you're coming along from an old link). By default, after 5 seconds, it could redirect to the current destination.
The public doesn't need an immutable history of URLs, they need URLs they can freaking type. When you've got pages people actually care to go to, then you can create your museum of URLs.
Luckily these are merely redirects!
Brings to mind this: https://x.com/NYCMayor/status/1971618033115550180
The lifetime of the programs they link to is also limited. There's no earthly reason, when running a website in 2026, to care what Tim Berners-Lee thought about the aesthetics and purposes of URLs in 1998. It's a nice nostalgia session, but "cool urls don't change" is ironically short-sighted and has lead to well-meaning dolts embedding GUIDs and other such constructs into them. The entire concept was posited prior to the advent of on-screen phone keyboards, which make typing long heavily-punctuated urls a pain in the ass. There are a thousand reasons to salute this document and let it recede into the mists of time.
A municipal website should be useful to the citizens who want to use it. This is a great example of doing something useful with the web.
This seems so amateur hour. The way the links work in this post are broken on mobile, and the first one I managed to make work was full of trivial grammatical errors.
Works on my machine. Didn't see any grammar errors.
does it matter?
big tech has long canceled url on phones.
I can type a URL on today's iPhone just fine.
I'm not a huge fan of Zohran, but man, I will admit that it is so refreshing to have a leader that isn't senile and is actually in touch.
Just admit you’re a fan. No shame in that.