Twitter Gives Trolls Exactly What They Need, 280 Characters

Twitter just unleashed its character limit increase from 140 to 280 to all of its users. Now trolls and Tweet-storm enthusiasts like POTUS Donald Trump have more to work with in order to spread their vitriol and hatred on the controversial platform. Twitter also assured that the increased character limit won’t fill up timelines.

The 280 character limit was previously tested on a small group back in September, The Hill reports. It was originally meant to help users who are typing in a language that required quite a few characters to make a point. This did not apply to users such as Chinese or Japanese because their character structures are usually short enough for the 140-character limit to accommodate.

As for English Twitter users, sending out Tweets is often enough, but not if there is a longer point to be made. Users such as president Trump, for example, often have to send out multiple Tweets, regardless of what the content is. Twitter also acknowledged that the increased character limit could result in concerns about flooded timelines, which the company addressed.

“We – and many of you – were concerned that timelines may fill up with 280 character Tweets, and people with the new limit would always use up the whole space. But that didn’t happen,” Twitter said. “As a result, your timeline reading experience should not substantially change, you’ll still see about the same amount of Tweets in your timeline.”

The bigger concern tied to the increase in character limits is how it encourages users to go on a Twitter tirade. With double the number of characters to work with, abusive comments on an increased scale.

As Mashable points out, this could also change how users think about their messages. One of the best things about the 140-character limit was how it essentially forced users to condense their messages to keep the original point in a shorter sentence. Now, they don’t have to do that.