[sjs]

I can submit a link to any URL in my control and swap it out for something else later. That can apply to every single link on the web. By that logic they should maintain a whitelist of not only redirection services such as shorteners, but for each and every domain.

I'm all for whitelisting and being paranoid, but it just doesn't make sense here and it seems a bit like they're trying to make the competition look bad. This should really be a blacklist instead.

[thenduks]

I'm not entirely sure but I believe the idea is that any 301 will cause bit.ly to show the interstitial. So you're right, it does apply to any site on the internet. It's just that you mostly notice it on other shortener services that haven't been whitelisted (blacklist makes no sense because it would then be bit.ly's responsibility to know of and check every other shortener service out there).