Wayne D's Blog

When Howcast.com accepted my Lemon Battery and posted it on their site I used Tweetdeck to simultaneously announce it on both Twitter and Facebook. It worked great until a few days later my wife, who browses Facebook frequently told me that when she clicked on the link which had been shortened with twurl.nl she got a popup saying the content had been reported as abusive.

After a bit of experimentation I realized that the default URL shortener used by Tweetdeck was what was blocked. Any URL in the twirl.nl domain causes the abusive content popup and blocks the Facebook user from accessing the link.

My advice would be not to post shortened URL's to Facebook. Facebook appears to be using a big hammer and instead of blocking a single URL is blocking whole domains. Now twurl.nl is blocked, who knows which URL shortening domain will be blocked next. Conspiracy theorists might also think this has something to do with the release of Facebook's own URL shortening service fb.me. Might Facebook be planning to block all other URL shorteners in the name of security?