In case you missed it, all links on Mastodon count as 23 characters towards your limit, no matter how many characters the link really is.
So, you don't need to use link shorteners on Mastodon as they won't actually affect the link's length.
Mastodon does this because it's better for everyone's privacy to avoid link shortener services, it means people can see what they're clicking on, and the link won't stop working if the shortener service shuts down.
More info at:
➡️ https://fedi.tips/you-dont-need-link-shorteners-on-mastodon/
@IamAcand @feditips
If you follow the tag you'll find posts about digital accessibility. 'a11y' is a numeronym for 'accessibility'. It dates back to 140 character Twitter & it's how most folks posting about accessibility tag their posts.
Numeronyms take the first & last characters of a term & is them to bookend a numeral representing the number of characters in between. E.g. 'accessibility' reduced to 'a11y', which is a big deal if your trying to communicate in coherent 140 or 280 char chunks.
@FeralRobots @IamAcand @feditips The 140/280 character limit is fundamentally incompatible with the coherent communication unless the idea you’re trying to convey just happens to incredibly simple and short. If all you do is post a headline and the relevant link to a news article and a blog post, that limitation won’t really matter very much. Unfortunately, people started using Twitter as a discussion platform, so no wonder why we ended up with a dumpster fire. Oh, and the gasoline algorithm didn’t really help, but it did increase engagement, so I guess it worked, if viewed from a certain angle.
