And before Twitter, that's the only kind of thing these services were used for. They were hardly prevalent, and they certainly weren't "necessary" in any sense. The downside just didn't really matter that much.

Now that's starting to change. By analogy: there's a legitimate use for DDT, and when I go camping once a year I happily buy a bottle of it, but that doesn't make spraying it out of a firehose around cities a good idea.

You're blowing this so far out of proportion that I'm not sure it's possible to have a reasonable discussion with you.

You really believe that people who think heavy widespread use of url shorteners is bad for the web are too unreasonable to even speak to? Dude... alright, whatever.

You compared the use of shortened URLs to spraying poison out of a firehose. Can't quite put my finger on it, but yeah, I think that's a bit unreasonable.

You do know that they did actually used to spray DDT out of a firehose, right? That that wasn't just some random bullshit I made up on the spot, it's actually a case where we did wrong by taking something that's okay in moderation and trying to use it in large quantities? Do I really think url shorteners are as bad as spraying poison out of a firehose? No, but it was a fucking analogy.