Speculation is growing that Twitter will extend its expanded 280-character limit to everyone, but even that long-awaited change won’t stop some users from complaining about the restriction.
Fortunately, two German men found a way to bypass Twitter’s character limit entirely and proved it earlier this week with an epic 30,000 character tweet. The post, first reported by The Next Web, has since been deleted by Twitter but you can still view it in the Internet Archive here.
What enlightening message did the duo craft after breaking the shackles of Twitter’s longstanding rule? Mostly nonsense.
The tweet, written in German, starts by introducing the two users who discovered the trick, “People! @Timrasett and @HackneyYT can override the character limit! You don’t believe us? Here is the approximately 35K character proof,” it reads. The rest is complete gibberish—one string of random numbers and character too long to even be a German word.
Eloquent or not, the post shows that it’s possible to publish a single tweet with more than 280 characters. Note, the tweet is actually “only” 30,396 characters, not 35,000. One of the tweet’s authors apologized, claiming Twitter showed them a different number.
So how did they do it? By exploiting a rule Twitter made in 2016 that links would no longer count in the 140-character limit. Yes, this is just one big web address with a URL code hidden deep in the large block of text. You can find it by opening up the tweet and searching for “.cc/”
If you're wondering how twitter[.]com/Timrasett/status/926903967027785728 works:
— hex waxwing :(){ :|: &};: (@hexwaxwing) November 4, 2017
[27024-char domain name].cc/[3244-char directory name] pic.twitter.com/vG26Jvz27F
Unfortunately, the tweet caused problems, with some users complaining of crashes. Twitter banned both Tim Rasett and HackneyYT earlier today, though the bans have since been lifted.
Hackney says he is still searching for bugs in Twitter and that this is “just the beginning.”
H/T The Next Web