Third-party links return to Strava with the help of AI

At the end of last year, Strava was making some strange moves that didn’t feel in line with user interests, from removing the ability to link to any third party, to removing the ability to use your account with third-parties by locking up its API access. Seemingly, the removal of the ability to link externally was done out of necessity, as the service was seeing an uptick in link spam, and so severing the function is how the company chose to handle the spam situation despite the limitation also affecting legitimate users. Strava now feels it has improved its spam detection so users can once again share third-party links across the service, whether they are subscribers or use the service for free.

After five months, Strave users can link externally again

Free or paid, users can once again link it up

A list of where users can share external links

Five months ago, a Strava community manager posted on the Community Hub that the service would start filtering links in an effort to combat spam. At the time, Strava was unsure when it would turn back on support for third-party links across its app’s surfaces. Well, thanks to a followup post made this week, we now know Strava has opened the ability to post external links once again with the help of an upgraded machine learning model (i.e., AI).

Strava goes on to specifically detail that third-party links can be shared in your Athlete Profile, as well as Club Descriptions, Event Descriptions, and Activity Descriptions. Apparently, previously removed links were restored for verified athletes and clubs this past December, though the links from non-verified users will not be reinstated, angering users.

Sadly, when Strava removed support for external links five months ago, it decimated years and years of the shared links of its users. Worse, Strava even confused text with decimal points as links and removed that stuff too, and it has no plans to bring this text back, even if it was falsely flagged, going so far as to warn text that is currently confused with links may also be removed. So despite Strava claiming its spam detection is now good enough to bring links back thanks to a new machine learning model, it would seem this learned machine isn’t so good that it won’t confuse regular text for links — womp womp.

A not-so-happy-user

Strava is also clear that it won’t be bringing back links for all surfaces, which is why it limited external links to sections that encourage the most engagement, like Athlete Profiles and Club Descriptions. This sounds self-serving, rather than a feature brought back to please the majority of users, and a few members of Strava’s community have picked up on this fact with complaints that this direction leaves too many open questions, like whether or not external links will work in regular feed posts.

Strava could do better to respect its users

But will it?

Ultimately, it is nice to see third-party links make a comeback, even if the new iteration is limited. However, it’s still hard to shake the feeling Strava is struggling to keep the leash tight on the service without disappointing its users. It’s nothing new to tech, we’ve seen the same with bigger companies pulling the ladder up once they hit the mainstream (Reddit, for example), the shift from growth to making money is here, and cookie crumbs like limited external linking likely aren’t going to fix the bigger problem that users don’t like to be strong armed after years and years of freedom. At the end of the day, Strava could do better.