Link Redirection – seriously?

Link shorteners are the death of the web. And here is another reason why! I just received a t.co link from a friend who probably didn’t know better. I, curious as I am checked out the redirection target before I clicked:

[17:43:31] <-----> btw das find ich ne gute idee ☺ http://t.co/h3LGsKwt
[17:45:54] <hoodie> meinst du jetzt echt den inhalt oder den link?
[17:46:03] <----> den inhalt
[17:46:35] <hoodie> 
  hoodie:~/ $ resolve http://t.co/h3LGsKwt
  http://feedly.com/k/KvJmnI
  hoodie:~/ $ resolve http://feedly.com/k/KvJmnI
  http://bit.ly/KvJmnI
  hoodie:~/ $ resolve http://bit.ly/KvJmnI
  http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/aktuell/feeds/rss/~3/mgwYBUl5Oj0/
  hoodie:~/ $ resolve http://feedproxy.google.com/\~r/aktuell/feeds/rss/\~3/mgwYBUl5Oj0/
  http://t3n.de/news/online-shop-nimmt-zuschlag-394639/?utm_source=feedburner+t3n+News+12.000er&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+aktuell%2Ffeeds%2Frss+%28t3n+News%29 
[17:46:50] <----> oO wow
[17:47:05] <----> das waren viele proxies
[17:47:15] <hoodie> und zack wissen 4 unbekannte partein, was du so anklickst

And this is what happens all the time day in day out all over the internet, you click on a link and all of a sudden 5 different parties know what you clicked and you don’t even know. And ten years from now nobody can make any assumptions on whether these links are still valid or not. Sometimes redirection links, e.g. those produced by twitter are even longer than the original url. So please let's get rid of these things.

Thank you.

PS: Background picture by Howard Lake