Twitter has been launching updates and changes in policies, interface, and staffing since Elon Musk took over. Now, he’s aiming to make a major change yet again, which is exponentially increasing the character limit on Twitter.
Expressing Yourself in 4000 characters
The news did not come from an official announcement. It was just the platform owner replying “yes” to a tweet that asked if Twitter was increasing the character limit from 280 to 4000. Although Musk did not provide more information, it was a confirmation regardless.
Yes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
For Twitter users from way back before 2017, the character limit was a mere 140 which doubled to 280. Users were more than happy with the change since 140 was not nearly enough. It’s yet to be seen how people would react now that the number is 14 times more than before.
According to MacRumors, the change was to make it easier for users to write just one tweet instead of creating a long thread. That means that people will no longer be able to retweet certain portions of a thread if they want, and they’re going to have to retweet the whole thing.
It’s still not clear if the character limit change would fare well. After all, one of the main appeals of Twitter is you get the thought of the author in just a few coherent sentences. Now, Twitter may be flooded with long essays that people would skip over.
Other Updates You Might’ve Missed
Among the recent news of Twitter is the much-anticipated turnout for Twitter Blue. The subscription has gained a lot of backlash from different industries, saying that it wasn’t a good idea to charge people $8 dollars for a subscription.
This gives anyone with $8 to spare the opportunity to get the once-coveted blue check mark. It didn’t help that the Tesla CEO implemented a price increase for iPhone users, because of Apple’s 30% tax on in-app purchases.
For governments and companies, the verification tag color will be different. Government organizations will have grey ticks, while companies and organizations will have gold ticks as well as a small company logo.
As for other famous people across different industries trying to make a name for themselves, they’ll be sharing the blue check mark with everyone else who will pay for the subscription. This breaks the culture of Twitter providing verification tags only to those who are well-known.
Elon has also decided to reinstate Twitter accounts that were previously surrounded by controversy. Among the account holders were Ye (Kanye West), Donald Trump, and Andrew Tate, as mentioned in CBS News.
It wasn’t long before Ye’s account was banned again, which lasted for two months. Former US president Donald Trump is yet to tweet since his account has been unbanned. His last tweet was from January 8th of 2021.
As for Andrew Tate, he’s still banned on other platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. As long as he doesn’t violate any Twitter rules, he technically falls under the “free speech” protection of Elon Musk, which hasn’t received a warm welcome from many people.