[babypuncher]

I think it would be easy for these services to audit their link database and cull any that have had dead endpoints for more than 12 months.

That would come off far less user hostile than this move while still achieving the goal of trimming truly unnecessary bloat from their database. It also doesn't require you to keep track of how often a link is followed, which incurs its own small cost.

[xp84]

> cull any that have had dead endpoints

That actually seems just as bad to me, since the URL often has enough data to figure out what was being pointed to even if the exact URL format of a site has changed or even if a site has gone offline. It might be like:

kmart dot com / product.aspx?SKU=12345678&search_term=Staplers or /products/swingline-red-stapler-1235467890

Those URLs would now be dead and kmart itself will soon be fully dead but someone can still understand what was being linked to.

Even if the URL is 404, it's still possibly useful information for someone looking at some old resource.

[Wicher]

Totally. Furthermore one can input that (now broken) URL into the Internet Archive to see if they might have snapshotted that red stapler page.