How to nicely post links on bsky?

September 14, 2023 12:17 AM

When I post links on Twitter, the link in the resulting post will automatically be expanded to a kind of thumbnail or snapshot that gives an impression of what the link content contains, which makes it easier to share with others. However, doing the same on bluesky/bsky just posts the link URL itself, and no thumbnail/snapshot. What can I do differently on bsky to automagically get the same effect as Twitter?
posted by They sucked his brains out! to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Unfortunately this probably isn't something that you can make happen on your own. The thumbnail/description that you're noting is called Open Graph data. It comes from the original link, but it's up to the service that you're posting it on to use and display that information. Obviously X (aka Twitter) does that, but it sounds like Bluesky doesn't.
posted by anotheraccount at 4:51 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: So when you paste a link into Bluesky, there should be an option that pops up at the bottom of the post window that says "Add link card". Hit that and it'll put that preview thingie at the bottom, *and* you can delete the link itself from your text if you want. (This will free up those characters for you.) If you're not seeing this, dunno what to tell you!
posted by restless_nomad at 5:59 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I notice that some sites, well, specifically cbc.ca never ever lead to a prompt to add a link card. Is that something CBC is blocking? Or something Bluesky doesn't do properly?
posted by stevil at 9:58 AM on February 16