We’re gate-keeping the most mainstream programming language now? Next you’ll say English isn’t a real language because it doesn’t have a native verb tense to express hearsay.

lmao… after this response to criticism, I definitely don’t want to trust any “service” you create.

you can deploy it on your own

Anyone can host an open-source URL shortener for their own links. How many people do? If something like this ever takes off, it will have to be centralized due to the nature of the product. And that adds extra bottlenecks for the community.

There are already instances down. […] If you want something that’s guaranteed to run forever, tough luck.

Despite instances being down the fediverse is fine. The content that was created by users on these instances was already federated to other instances so we didn’t lose it. You can’t go back and change links the same way. You’re not federating. You’re handing out code for running individual centralised servers. That’s why I said that this is opposed to federation.

This is specifically for use outside Lemmy

You seem to have overlooked a really important insight about your own project. Who has preferred Lemmy instances? People who already have Lemmy accounts!! If someone doesn’t have a preference, this service is a useless extra hop.

Lemmy users can voluntarily install browser extensions to improve their own experience. Lemmy apps can claim domains so that at least common lemmy instances are recognised. This is true freedom and convenience without being beholden to a third-party website.

I feel like you implemented the first idea that came to your mind and now you are just defending the project instead of trying to see the bigger picture.

In my opinion this runs counter to the idea of federation; i wouldn’t use it.

You probably do intend to keep it running for ever, but if you can’t for whatever reason, all links created using this service become dead links. If this were client-side, maybe. But this needs a server to be running at lemmyverse.link and/or threadiverse.link. Imagine someone else gets hold of those domains. They can snoop every use.

I have multiple accounts and might want to choose based on what I’m researching. If it were on a client, it should be a widget, but this doesn’t allow me to switch that so easily.

I think the solution should be for all Lemmy clients to detect links when possible and open them up in-app and/or have browser plugins that can redirect requests on the user’s machine. These won’t cover all the cases that your service can, but i would still prefer that over all Lemmy links being resolved by a centralized service that can read your cookies.