> Am I supposed to be mad at twitter for forcing me to use their unreliable link shortener?
Yes.
> How is this any different from the countless times twitter.com was down?
This is different because if I read a tweet cached in my client or archived somewhere I can't reach an external resource because a middleman is down.
> It's a centralized service, things happen.
The WWW is decentralized by design. Link shorteners, and reliance on them, make it obnoxiously centralized. The tweet itself should contain the full link and shorten it only on display [0] [1].
So, why is (apparently) everyone — including Twitter — sending us through t.co?
Example here[0] where you can see Twitter displays "mlkshk.com/r/K29L.jpeg" in the tweet, downright lies to you when hovering over it with "http://mlkshk.com/r/K29L.jpeg while the real href is http://t.co/fqxnG84t.
Yes.
> How is this any different from the countless times twitter.com was down?
This is different because if I read a tweet cached in my client or archived somewhere I can't reach an external resource because a middleman is down.
> It's a centralized service, things happen.
The WWW is decentralized by design. Link shorteners, and reliance on them, make it obnoxiously centralized. The tweet itself should contain the full link and shorten it only on display [0] [1].
[0] https://alpha.app.net/marco/post/783814
[1] https://alpha.app.net/marco/post/783881