In defense of URL Shorteners

I’m the author of Flink , a free and open-source (FLOSS) URL Shortener with a ton of handy features. I operate two of the main public instances: flink.is and flink.rtrace.io . Every day visitors create anywhere between 20 and 80 shortened links across both instances. Most visitors use Flink exactly as intended. To make long URLs easier to share, generate QR codes, or create short, memorable link…