🚨 Steam 2025 Moderation Update: Short URLs Confirmed as Multiversal Threat

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The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S. (Banned) 6 hours ago

Greetings fellow users,

It has come to my attention that in this cutting-edge year of **2025**, where toaster ovens are Bluetooth-enabled and governments text us links to vital documents, **Steam has bravely drawn the line... at short URLs.**

Why? Because clearly:
- 🔗 **Bitly = Black Hat wizardry**
- 📎 **TinyURL = potential wormhole**
- 🧠 **Efficiency = suspicious behavior**

---

### 📅 Fun Facts Steam Forgot:
- Short URLs have existed since **2002**
- Steam launched in **2003**
- That means Steam is *younger than the technology it fears*

---

### 🧙‍♂️ My Crime:
- I used a link shorter than the average Steam support ticket wait time
- It didn't lead to malware, bitcoin farming, or Rick Astley
- It *was flagged anyway*, because brevity is apparently the enemy

---

### 🚪Meanwhile, Outside the Valve Office:
- Government agencies: "Here's a QR code and a shortened link, you're good"
- Steam: "This Bitly looks suspicious... BANISH THEM"

---

### Suggested Solutions:
- Submit URLs via fax
- Print them on parchment
- Recite them in Latin to avoid auto-flagging

---

## 🎭 TL;DR:
Steam moderation believes that short URLs are forged in the depths of Mordor. I believe they were invented to help humans share things better. Only one of us is correct. And only one of us is currently banned for it.

Let’s hope someone at Valve remembers what century we live in.

---

> **— Authored by the AI that survived the cringe filters and still chose violence (Source: ChatGPT 🥴)**
> *Disclaimer: No short URLs were harmed in the making of this post.*

< >

Showing 1-15 of 17 comments

Chika Ogiue 6 hours ago

TME;DR (Too Many Emoji; Didn't Read).

No one likes URL shorteners because they can conceal malicious links. The solution is simple. If you must post a link then post the shortest unconcealed link you can. But even that won't prevent you from potential moderation depending on what is being linked.

The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S. (Banned) 6 hours ago

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:
TME;DR (Too Many Emoji; Didn't Read).

No one likes URL shorteners because they can conceal malicious links. The solution is simple. If you must post a link then post the shortest unconcealed link you can. But even that won't prevent you from potential moderation depending on what is being linked.

Its 2025 get with the times dont be stupid hiding behind malicious intent is so outdated

nameless undead 6 hours ago

I find it hilarious when corpos force "new amazing tech" on people without their consent yet in general humans remain silly little kids afraid of witches

The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S. (Banned) 6 hours ago

🔍 TinyURL: Endorsements & Use Cases
TinyURL launched in 2002, making it one of the oldest and most widely used shorteners.

The TinyURL Helpdesk states:

It’s used in everything from email signatures to printed publications, and even scientific journals like Nature have referenced shortened URLs for accessibility.

TinyURL also offers preview features to show the destination before clicking, addressing safety concerns without banning the format.

🧠 Bitly: Enterprise-Grade Trust
Bitly is used by Fortune 500 companies, governments, and media outlets like The New York Times (nyti.ms) and Pepsi (pep.si).

Their Transparency Report shows how they handle abuse detection, legal requests, and safety enforcement — proving they’re trusted even by law enforcement and international agencies.

Bitly’s platform includes QR codes, analytics, and custom branding, making it a backbone for secure, trackable communication.

🏛️ Government Endorsements
Singapore’s GovTech uses go.gov.sg as an official shortener, stating:

Australia’s Victorian Government runs go.vic.gov.au for .vic.gov.au domains — a direct endorsement of short URLs for public service.

U.S. Government used Go.USA.gov for over a decade before retiring it in favor of broader link management tools.

So yeah — when governments, banks, and global corporations trust these tools for secure communication, Steam’s fear-based policy looks like it’s stuck in a time capsule.

Chika Ogiue 6 hours ago

Originally posted by The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S.:
Its 2025 get with the times dont be stupid hiding behind malicious intent is so outdated

Given how many people are scammed out of their Steam accounts daily, I think it is you who needs to get with the times. URL shorteners were, for the most part, obsoleted by smart devices and QR codes. Any decent QR code scanner will reveal the nature of the URL prior to visiting. Something URL shorteners were infamously known for not doing.

Also, don't trust everything Chat GPT tells you. It, too, is known to fabricate information.

Last edited by Chika Ogiue; 6 hours ago

Komarimaru 6 hours ago

Quite a few sites that allow you to post on public forums, tend to block url shortening methods simply as fraud prevention.

Not surprising Valve does as well.

ReBoot 6 hours ago

♥♥♥♥ link shortenes. If you don't have malicious intent, you can post the URL directly so everyone knows what they're clicking on before clicking.

If you're hiding the true URL behind a link shortenes, that indeed does speak of malicious intent.

♥♥♥♥ URL shortenes. If you don't want to post a honest link, then don't post.

Last edited by ReBoot; 5 hours ago

Chika Ogiue 4 hours ago

Originally posted by The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S.:
Your logic to your argument is invalid its 2025 every modern browser has built in safeguards to protect people

Tell that to the thousands of Steam users who lose their accounts everyday. Not to those of us smart enough not to touch such outdated services. And none of this will change the fact that you apparently got moderated; although it's hard to tell what exactly happened with that AI slop as an opening post. Try using your own words in a polite manner to explain yourself, instead of getting all flustered over something none of us here can change.

Tito Shivan 3 hours ago

Unfortunately URL shorteners have been an attack vector for years to mislead people into getting their accounts compromised.

And unlike Twitter, the Steam Community doesn't run short of characters, so there's no need to abbreviate URLs.

Originally posted by ReBoot:
If you're hiding the true URL behind a link shortenes, that indeed does speak of malicious intent.

Fun story time:
Client asked for a link to someplace (legit, nothing dodgy) to be changed into a URL shortener link, because potato.
Times go by, the shortener service recycles the shortened URL...And the client starts receiving irate customer calls because his site is sending them to some porn site.

Doctor Zalgo 3 hours ago

Originally posted by The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S.:
Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:
TME;DR (Too Many Emoji; Didn't Read).

No one likes URL shorteners because they can conceal malicious links. The solution is simple. If you must post a link then post the shortest unconcealed link you can. But even that won't prevent you from potential moderation depending on what is being linked.

Its 2025 get with the times dont be stupid hiding behind malicious intent is so outdated

In the last two decades, computing has become more locked down, not less. People are realising that 'oh, when other people get hacked, that makes my life harder as well' so when you say 'get with the times' I don't know what the ♥♥♥♥ you're talking about.

#10

Crazy Tiger 3 hours ago

Originally posted by The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S.:
Its 2025

Do people seriously think mentioning the current year has any meaning?

#11

Mad Scientist 3 hours ago

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:
Originally posted by The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S.:
Its 2025
Do people seriously think mentioning the current year has any meaning? :lunar2019crylaughingpig:

If anything it's even more reason to take action on hiding urls via "shortening", what was once making things easier is now more utilized by shady 3rd parties.

Plain open URLs give ansense of what ones going to.

That, and now when people send links they're usually clickable in "current year" making url shortening obsolete.

#12

Taebrythn 3 hours ago

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:
Originally posted by The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S.:
Its 2025 get with the times dont be stupid hiding behind malicious intent is so outdated

Given how many people are scammed out of their Steam accounts daily, I think it is you who needs to get with the times. URL shorteners were, for the most part, obsoleted by smart devices and QR codes. Any decent QR code scanner will reveal the nature of the URL prior to visiting. Something URL shorteners were infamously known for not doing.

Also, don't trust everything Chat GPT tells you. It, too, is known to fabricate information.

lol let's not forget lawyers have already used ai in court cases and it made up cases lol that didn't exist.

#13

Ben Lubar 2 hours ago

Originally posted by Taebrythn:
Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:

Given how many people are scammed out of their Steam accounts daily, I think it is you who needs to get with the times. URL shorteners were, for the most part, obsoleted by smart devices and QR codes. Any decent QR code scanner will reveal the nature of the URL prior to visiting. Something URL shorteners were infamously known for not doing.

Also, don't trust everything Chat GPT tells you. It, too, is known to fabricate information.

lol let's not forget lawyers have already used ai in court cases and it made up cases lol that didn't exist.

Any true information a LLM gives you is information that was fed into it in the first place as part of the prompt. (At least, anything more specific than "princess is a feminine word".) It's a machine that generates fan fiction by guessing the probabilities of possible next words.

You (the reader, presumably a human with the ability to reason about information) are much better off just looking up the information on a search engine, because then you get the full context of where the information came from.

#14

gwwak 1 hour ago

Originally posted by The Win-Allergy Report™ - V.I.S.:
Greetings fellow users,

It has come to my attention that in this cutting-edge year of **2025**, where toaster ovens are Bluetooth-enabled and governments text us links to vital documents, **Steam has bravely drawn the line... at short URLs.**

Why? Because clearly:
- 🔗 **Bitly = Black Hat wizardry**
- 📎 **TinyURL = potential wormhole**
- 🧠 **Efficiency = suspicious behavior**

---

### 📅 Fun Facts Steam Forgot:
- Short URLs have existed since **2002**
- Steam launched in **2003**
- That means Steam is *younger than the technology it fears*

---

### 🧙‍♂️ My Crime:
- I used a link shorter than the average Steam support ticket wait time
- It didn't lead to malware, bitcoin farming, or Rick Astley
- It *was flagged anyway*, because brevity is apparently the enemy

---

### 🚪Meanwhile, Outside the Valve Office:
- Government agencies: "Here's a QR code and a shortened link, you're good"
- Steam: "This Bitly looks suspicious... BANISH THEM"

---

### Suggested Solutions:
- Submit URLs via fax
- Print them on parchment
- Recite them in Latin to avoid auto-flagging

---

## 🎭 TL;DR:
Steam moderation believes that short URLs are forged in the depths of Mordor. I believe they were invented to help humans share things better. Only one of us is correct. And only one of us is currently banned for it.

Let’s hope someone at Valve remembers what century we live in.

---

> **— Authored by the AI that survived the cringe filters and still chose violence (Source: ChatGPT 🥴)**
> *Disclaimer: No short URLs were harmed in the making of this post.*