this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Wanna talk about web safety? Yeah, et.al now comes up as a website link.
Thanks Google! Thanks for letting pretty much any .bullshit top level domain...
calling other countries TLDs bullshit is quite a take
The original top level domains were only .com, .net, .org, and .gov. Your fancy country top level domains were never part of the original internet plan.
Is that origin.al or not?
Whoops, my bad, I must have made a typo somewhere...
One accidental dot, which happens to be near the letter N on the keyboard, can be the difference between a word and a link.
Do you really wanna see the effects of someone registering origin.al ...?
You're missing the point. Lemme test yet another thing (do not click if this pops up as a link)...
google.bullshit
^ See, I don't know what dot nonsense they do and don't accept anymore, but I'm gonna make an educated guess before I post that for at least some users that'll display as a link.
Either way, et.al is used frequently in legal documents, at least in the USA. And they retrofit their new top level domains to old documents where it was never used as any sort of link.
et.al should be banned, literally for all previous legal court documents.
I think it was a typo, the phrase is usually written "et al." which cannot be confused with a domain.
That et is exclusively for Albanian use.
Also, what's the difference between a typo and an autocorrect glitch unnoticed?
If one single dot is the difference between legit words vs a janky link, the internet is doomed.
attachment.zip
Perhaps it was.
goggle.com was once a typo as well.
You do realize another way to write et al is...
et. al.
Miss one space, bam, your typo turns into a link these days.
That's on you, not the internet or google. As has been pointed out, dot al is a TLD for a country. Just because you can't type properly and didn't spell check yourself, doesn't mean the internet is doomed.
You make typo, send it to friend, friend clicks link...
Is that origin.al or not?
"et" doesn't need to be abbreviated, it's a full word. "al." is short for "alia".
You could argue that typos shouldn't get turned into links, but there's simply no good way of stopping that from happening.
Yes, yes there most certainly is a way to completely prevent that from ever happening.
Get rid of this whole automatic link detecting shit altogether and require the use of https:// before every single link.
Believe it or not, that's how the internet used to work, and we didn't have stupid shit like attachment.zip
That's the TLD of Albania though
And? et.al is used in practically all USA legal documents.
So what, all our legal documents are supposed to link to Albania now?
Cuz that's how this shit tries to work now.
As others have pointed out, it's actually: et al.
You're mad about nothing.
Congrats, you must not make any typos. I guess nobody else makes any tpyos either according to your statistics.
One wrong dot, one wrong space, suddenly legit text becomes an unexpected, unintended link.
Of course I make typos :) But
.al
is the top-level domain of a country. This is the original purpose of the system. If you type something that looks like a valid domain, and this is a valid domain, why not make it a link? Maybe I mistook your point all along. Why don't you think this should be a link?I would agree that we have too many useless TLDs, and Google did help in spreading more domains, but I just don't think this is a case where it applies.
The original top level domains were .com, .net, .org, and .gov. Your fancy country top level domains were never part of the original internet plan.
Is that origin.al or not?
Whoops, my bad, I must have made a typo somewhere...
You can tell me what's incorrect all day long. Doesn't matter. Many people can't spell to save their life, plus autocorrect likes to screw with people as well.
If one accidental character is the difference between a legal term and a link, the world is soon to be fucked.
Just wait until someone registers et.al...
The grandparent commenter should've written "et al." instead. The "alii" is the abbreviated part, not the "et".
Agreed about the bullshit TLDs, by the way.
How is that Google's fault?
Cuz Google somehow or another managed to get .zip passed as a top level domain.
attachment.zip
^ That's not even written out as a markdown link, that's literally just the letters I typed.
See, clearly Google is getting a bit careless about their top level domains. Lemme try a thing...
google.bs
^ If this shows up as a link, please don't click. Or at least proceed with caution.
Probably just depends on how websites or apps handle it? I'm using Liftoff and that's not a link for me
Strangely, I've discovered that for whatever reason, Liftoff isn't working right (as per current standards).
google.bs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.bs
Hmm interesting, it probably just needs to be updated
Does show up as a link for me. Using Jerboa for Android.