Zohran and the Short Link

lzy•about 2 hours ago

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.

NSPG911•about 1 hour ago

it would be nice if they added a link preview

not sure why they have never done that before

cosmic_cheese•about 1 hour ago

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.

mmooss•32 minutes ago

At least some traditional link shorterners let you choose the string.

gravypod•about 2 hours ago

People are discovering go links from first principles.

amazingamazing•about 2 hours ago

I like click to cancel. Should have a year at least in url

ewwe•about 2 hours ago

Mamdani+ his team are genius at PR

SwellJoe•about 2 hours ago

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.

toomuchtodo•31 minutes ago

https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov

GauntletWizard•about 2 hours ago

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

pavo-etc•about 2 hours ago

Luckily these are merely redirects!

markdown•about 1 hour ago

Brings to mind this: https://x.com/NYCMayor/status/1971618033115550180

stonogo•about 1 hour ago

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.

micromacrofoot•about 2 hours ago

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

jachee•about 2 hours ago

What if I told you there’s an existing protocol for doing Really Simple Syndication?

tadfisher•about 2 hours ago

Sorry, we're on the wrong timeline. The worse one, in fact.

slopinthebag•about 2 hours ago

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.

bakies•about 2 hours ago

Works on my machine. Didn't see any grammar errors.

jimmydoe•about 2 hours ago

does it matter?

big tech has long canceled url on phones.

api•about 2 hours ago

I can type a URL on today's iPhone just fine.

WarmWash•about 1 hour ago

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.

Zohran and the Short Link

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Discussion (33 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews