Why NYC's Zohran Mamdani Uses Short Links Like nyc.gov/initiative
Zohran and the Short Link
In a blog post, Will W. praises New York City Council Member Zohran Mamdani's use of short, top-level links like nyc.gov/{initiative} in his social media videos. The author argues that these human-readable URLs make government more accessible, funnel social media traffic to an official city-owned domain, establish a consistent pattern for online civic engagement, and ensure that announcements lead to real, participatory experiences.
It’s a human-readable URL that I can easily follow through on.
- jancsika
> click-to-cancel combat-antisemitism EndStreetHarassment jingle knicks knicksgame3 rental-ripoff Summer
I'd like to believe that the diversity, equity, and inclusion of Scheme, Pascal, and C stdlib naming conventions here is intentional.
- cosmic_cheese
This makes a lot of sense if public participation is actually desired. Links need to be short, snappy, and memorable so they're easy to either type into a smartphone on the spot or be recalled at some point later when one has a spare moment. This kind of link is also more likely to spread via word of mouth.
Traditional link shorteners only meet one of those requirements. Random strings aren't going to be remembered and the chances that they'll be mistyped is substantially higher.
- lzy
This is similar to Singapore’s https://go.gov.sg links.
Functions exactly like tinyurl, generally used by public officers for the various programmes/initiatives from the ministries and agencies.
- thoughtpeddler
The meta on this post is that the minimalist blog design by iamwillwang.com is itself really cool. Great work!
- gravypod
People are discovering go links from first principles.