Gregory's Server
@vfrmedia @msh @VictorVenema and there's Instagram simply not supporting any link, giving us the cursed "link in bio" thing.
I think there's definitely a certain hostility toward hypertext in their algos, and I suspect there is valid concerns for spam & malware, meeting their own interests in keeping people on their app.
Spam is actually the argument used by Pixelfed for copying the anti-link approach of Instagram. And I was just thinking the other day... spam really does ruin a lot of things
@vfrmedia @msh @VictorVenema it's an irrelevant anecdote, but I noticed last week that the newsletter of the non-profit where I work gets a high amount of hard bounces from mail providers whenever I've used an harmless unicode character in the subject. And of course, that's all because spammers have been abusing unicode characters to, among other things, circumvent spam filters.