Ive produced 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 short URLs to share in place of long URLs. Some individuals use Bitly to attempt to mask URLs to attempt to get you to click on wicked links.
The trick is to simply add a “+” to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the “+” the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then show you the Bitly page on which the reduced URL is hosted and will show you what the original 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 but include “+” to the end of it so it reads like this.
bit.ly/ 2ZZnuP2+ you will go to the Bitly page where I shortened my initial URL.