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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

What “tweet limit” are you talking about? Twitter went to 280 well before Musk and I’m almost certain view counts were there before him as well in the little bar chart icon.

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He talks about this tweet limit:

"The character limit for subscribers in the U.S. is now 4,000—more than 14 times the existing 280-character limit, which remains in place for all non-subscribers and Twitter Blue users outside of the United States".

So the limit in the US for Twitter Blue users is 4000 characters, but even paying user outside the US are limited to 280?

What a strange limitation, if the character limit is a problem, won't that just drive away users who see the service as racist now?

I don’t browse Twitter since 3rd party apps got kicked to the curb but I think it’s telling that not a single tweet I have seen in the interim was longer than 280 (aka one that was popular enough to be posted here or somewhere else I’d see). I think less of people who have a blue check now. The idea of paying for “less ads” and shit features would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

Bill Ackman posts primarily long tweets, and I see it often enough from other random accounts that the feature is definitely being used. But even if it wasn't, just having the option is a nice feature. Always found it absurd how people in comments want to restrict peoples' freedoms in applications - I guess people are afraid of change, hence why these big corporations often stop innovating.

> Always found it absurd how people in comments want to restrict peoples' freedoms in applications

"Restrict peoples' freedoms", good lord, as the kids say you might need to touch grass. What an absolutely absurd (and incorrect) thing to say. I just said I had never seen it, I didn't pass judgement for or against longer tweets. I think people that pay for that are silly but comparing that to restricting freedoms is just a new level of disconnected from reality.

restricting freedoms was referring to the people who were adamant on keeping Twitter's previous 280 character restriction, which I see now you weren't advocating for

The humorous thing is that a lot some people are paying $8/month to then post tweets that most people (everyone?) only see the beginning of.

So unless you are in the US and are a paying user, you can't even see these longer posts, or do they get truncated?

I wonder what the motivation is for making the service less useful for non-Americans.

They get truncated with a "show more" link that points to the full tweet (rather than expanding it in-place).

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