Ive developed a couple of short video presentations of how this trick works. This is the Instagram video that I made about it. This is the YouTube video that I made about it.

Bitly is a practical tool for producing brief URLs to share in place of long URLs. Ive utilized it for many years to produce tailored URLs that are simple for my students to type. Sadly, some people use Bitly to try to mask URLs to try to get you to click nefarious links. Thankfully, there is an easy way to see where a Bitly link will take you without having to really click on the link..
The technique is to simply add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will reroute to Bitly rather of to whatever the original URL was. That will then reveal you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will reveal you what the initial link was..

You can try this with my Bitly link of.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2 which will take you to the registration page for my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter (.
https://practicaledtech.com/weekly-newsletter/). If you try the same link however include “+” to the end of it so it reads like this.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2+ you will go to the Bitly page where I reduced my initial URL.