The sad part is that <a href>'s are actually blocked from using data:text/html URLs. So we can still create tiny games and apps that can be copy/pasted in the address bar, but we can't link to them.
You may not be able to <a> to them, but you can certainly issue redirects to them, and <a> to a URL that issues such a redirect.
You can also <a> to a URL that issues a redirect to a location given by a GET parameter, eliminating the need to stand up a site for every different idea you come up with.
In chrome, what's blocked is page-initiated top-level navigations to data URLs (because of spoofing concerns). You can load them in iframes, and you can still do a browser-initiated navigation to them (i.e., type them into the omnibox). They can be used freely as subresources.
Http Redirection to data: urls has been blocked in chrome for at least half a decade. There's really no reason to allow that, a server can just as easily return the data as the response body.
I created this self referencing URL:
`data:text/html, <html><head><title>SO META</title></head><body><h1>This link's url is</h1><script>p = document.createElement("p");p.innerText = window.location.href;document.body.appendChild(p)</script></body></html>`
The sad part is that <a href>'s are actually blocked from using data:text/html URLs. So we can still create tiny games and apps that can be copy/pasted in the address bar, but we can't link to them.