Bug-finding enthusiast Jane Manchun Wong found on Thursday night that she could post a series of a's in a tweet, 84,000 of them, without triggering a new extended character limit for Twitter Blue subscribers.
Twitter made a change on Thursday for Twitter Blue subscribers, allowing them to post entire essays or articles in a tweet — 10,000 characters, or up to around 1,500 words. But, as Wong discovered, a single line of a's could go up to 84,000 characters before the rest were put behind a "Show More" prompt.
Wong and several other people have been able to exploit this bug and post these epically long, tiring-to-scroll tweets, which could certainly start to hamper one's feed if a lot of people were doing this.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 14, 2023
bug: it’s supposed to be just "test" pic.twitter.com/0RvTjknj1B
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 14, 2023
Wong writes, "view the tweet on web for this magnificent bug before they fix it."
As PC Mag reports, this latest change got implemented Thursday, expanding the capacity of tweets for subscribers — and turning Twitter into Medium, basically — after Musk had initially allowed subscribers a new 4,000-chracter limit.
"We’re making improvements to the writing and reading experience on Twitter! Starting today, Twitter now supports Tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting. Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features..." the company says.
They are also launching a new monetization thing with subscriptions — essentially looking to compete with Substack, it looks like.
We’re making improvements to the writing and reading experience on Twitter! Starting today, Twitter now supports Tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting.
— Twitter Write (@TwitterWrite) April 14, 2023
Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable…
Seems like there are some details to iron out here!
Bugs have been occurring with some regularity over at Elon Musk's Twitter. Another bug that was fairly widely reported this week was with Twitter Circle, which just launched last year — people were finding that people who were not their close friends were suddenly privy to their private tweets, which could lead to some embarrassment.
In the meantime, while they work on this tweet-length thing, anyone have any manifestos they'd like to post? Unpublished novels?
Previously: Elon Musk Gives Interview to BBC, Says Running Twitter Is 'Painful,' Hints That He'd Sell to the Right Buyer
