Twitter is testing giving users 280 characters in tweets:
We want every person around the world to easily express themselves on Twitter, so we’re doing something new: we’re going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming (which is all except Japanese, Chinese, and Korean).
I’m not a fan of this implementation. Quick thoughts:
The rampant abuse and harassment on Twitter is disgusting and remains unfixed. I have a small to medium following on Twitter and when something I tweet goes outside my little music community network, I can’t keep up with the shit that comes into my replies. And what I see is nothing compared to the hate speech thrown at other people on this platform on a daily basis. This should be the number one priority to fix; however, since Twitter needs their “active user” numbers to keep going up for Wall Street, I doubt it’ll ever be.1
An edit button for tweets seems like a clear need and a relatively easy add. Give a few minutes to edit right after posting and then include a history/version of edits after that so someone can’t edit a post later and change the entire meaning after it’s been quoted/embedded places.
Extra text should be added to a post in the same way a photo or video or link is added. Make it additional to the main tweet, easy to access/expand, and in plain text. This can cut down on tweetstorms and massive threads and still allow people to respond/get longer thoughts out. I’m not opposed to more characters in a tweet, I just don’t like this implementation.
And they’ll never ban Trump, no matter how many threats he makes. He’ll be tweeting nuclear Armageddon and the last one posting.↩