Twitter Exploit Let Two Pranksters Post 30,000-Character Tweet (engadget.com)

sqorbit writes: Two German twitter users were able to post a 30,000-character tweet, blowing way past the 280-character limit it is testing for select users. The accounts were banned for a brief period of time but are now back online after they apologized. The original 30,396-character tweet has been archived and can be viewed here. The two pranksters exploited "a rule Twitter made in 2016 that links would no longer count in the 140-character limit," reports The Daily Dot. "Yes, this is just one big web address with a URL code hidden deep in the large block of text."

Comments

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[ourlovecanlastforeve]

I don't understand why this is news.

140 characters

[OrangeTide]

Before the wide use of smart phones (remember Twitter was out before the iPhone), there were limits to the early version of the SMS protocol used. Depending on carrier and network but typically the maximum individual short message size was 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters.
If you're one of those, like me, who still sends Tweets using SMS (rather than MMS which can be a bit finicky on Android devices), you'll still run into these limits.

But the users, audience, and content is pretty well versed in the 140 character limit. And while many people try to make multiple tweets to explain some thought in a rambling way, most of the well-shared re-tweets are concise statements and fit in well with the theory behind sound bites. Also, look at this very post if you want to want an example of a long winded ramble of the kind that really doesn't exist on Twitter but is commonplace on Slashdot.