If I have to repost content that contained shortened links, I always replace them with what they redirect to, and scrub out what's unneeded (e.g. session IDs, referer querystrings). I wish more people would do this, as it will help in reducing the amount of nested redirections. IMHO link shorteners are only for extremely space-constrained applications like Twitter.
As for some sites having extremely long required URLs: Sometimes they are necessary, e.g. parametric searches, but many other times they could've been better designed to be either shorter or more informative. Whatever the form, I don't think link shorteners should be used to hide them, if there is enough space available to hold the full URL.
As for some sites having extremely long required URLs: Sometimes they are necessary, e.g. parametric searches, but many other times they could've been better designed to be either shorter or more informative. Whatever the form, I don't think link shorteners should be used to hide them, if there is enough space available to hold the full URL.