I've also updated the post to reflect this: I don't mind paying. Its the policy of not leaving me a choice to do so by not allowing me to export my data and go elsewhere that bothers me.
And that is why you vet free services extensively. There's a reason they're free. Often times lock in is the way they do things.
Sure it sounds unfair when you say "they won't let ME export MY data", but it sounds different when you say "we'll provide a FREE service for you, up to a point, but when it gets reasonably large or commercial you promise to give us your business."
That's a step in the right direction, but the piece still reads as though you're trying to shift the blame for your mistake.
Removing any "shady" or "not cool" accusations (and implicitly leaving them to the reader), and just adopting a neutral "Hey devs, make sure you read the ToS, 'cause I didn't and look what happened..." tone would make your piece basically unassailable.
How would they realistically "allow" you to export your data?
Would it require extra programmer effort and cost to develop such export functionality? If they didn't invest the money to build that capability, why would they want to? What's the ROI for them to do it?
It took several years for GMail to have mailbox export capabilities. Some team somewhere has to write and test all that code.
Is there even data to export? It appears to me the OP would need the bit.ly domain to preserve the links, otherwise he could just scrape all the URLs and find a way to redirect them.
He used his own custom URL, which is cleverer because he can take it with him, but not so clever because ... reason we are having this conversation now, you have to think this through! I've never used Bit.ly's hosted service, but he already said there's no way to export the data. So, hopefully clear there is some data, Bit.ly has a list of shared URLs from his customers, and they've populated a database with some short codes in order to redirect them.
They are (correct me if I'm not understanding how this service works) the only ones in a position to know which short URLs are already used and which ones are not.
So, if the list of short codes is short enough that he can search it in a couple of days and follow all of the links, then that's obviously what he should be doing rather than having public gripe time on HN.
(Then again, if he pays them just once he gets a decent bit of extra time, and they get paid for providing the service when his business was too small to justify him bringing his own infrastructure. Win-win?)
Sure it sounds unfair when you say "they won't let ME export MY data", but it sounds different when you say "we'll provide a FREE service for you, up to a point, but when it gets reasonably large or commercial you promise to give us your business."
There is no such thing as a free lunch.