Elon Musk confirms he's changing Twitter character limit from 280 to 4,000

Virgin Radio

13 Dec 2022, 11:18

Twitter may well be getting a shiny makeover, thanks to new owner Elon Musk. The business magnate replied to a tweet inquiring whether Twitter was going to increase its character limit from 280 to 4,000.

The billionaire replied a short and simple: "Yes."

The new character limit is thought to allow approximately 570 to 1,000 words with spaces and is 14 times the current count.

Back in November, Musk revealed he was keen to increase the character limit to 1,000 and confirmed it was on his 'to-do list’.

The last time Twitter increased its character limit was in 2017 when founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey was in charge and upped it from 140 to 280 characters.

Dorsey said at the time: "It’s a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity."

On Monday, Twitter's subscription service Twitter Blue was relaunched enabling subscribers to edit tweets, upload 1080p videos and get a blue account verification tick for $8 (£6.5) per month through the web and $11 (£8.9) per month through Apple iOS.

Under Musk, it's thought Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, 'the advisory group of nearly 100 independent civil, human rights and other organisations', formed in 2016 to 'address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm' and more.

An email signed from 'Twitter' read: "Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before, and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal."

After buying Twitter, Musk said he would form a new 'content moderation council' to 'help make major decisions', but last week, three council members resigned in a public statement that said 'contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter's users are on the decline'.

The world’s richest man and 'Chief Twit' took over Twitter in a $44billion (£35b) deal in October.