Do you remember when Twitter stopped limiting the number of usernames you could tag in a post and suddenly for a few days people started tagging dozens of users at once just to be annoying? Well, if people start duplicating this hack, itâll make your timeline a hell of a lot worse than that.
https://gizmodo.com/oh-please-why-no-1818820995
On November 4th, Twitter user Timrasett sent out a tweet that was 35,000 characters long. Yes, while people are either clamoring to be included in the 280-character limit club or bemoaning Twitterâs choice to double the potential length of a tweet, it appears thereâs a loophole that will allow you to ruin the flow of peoplesâ timelines in a big way.
Timrasett worked with another user going by HackneyYT to break Twitterâs character limit with a message that begins âPeople! @Timrasett and @HackneyYT can exceed the character limit! You do not believe us? Hereâs about 35k characters proof.â (Translated from German via Google.) After that, thousands of characters of seeming nonsense appear. At least part of the trick is that the nonsense is formatted as a URL. Partially through the long tweet, youâll find the characters â.cc/tsyauâŠâ and then it continues going with more randomness.
Itâs not totally clear why this method got past Twitterâs automatic link shortening tools, but the tweet was treated just the same as if it were sending out a standard, reasonably-sized URL. Both users were briefly suspended and the tweet has been deleted. Thankfully, the Internet Archive picked it upâjust in case the people from Guinness decide this might count as the longest tweet ever recorded.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/927158740297674752
Weâve reached out to both users to see if they want to reveal their trick, but for the moment, theyâre shooting down inquiries on their respective timelines. Weâve also contacted Twitter for comment on the loophole and to ask if theyâve made changes to stop it from happening again. The company has yet to reply. When we simply tried tweeting the same message, it now goes slightly over the character limit. Take out a few characters and hit tweet and it gives you this message, âYour Tweet was over 140 characters. Youâll have to be more clever.â
For all of you monsters out there who actually want the new 280 character limit, you now have an even more ambitious goal.
Update: A spokesperson for Twitter confirmed that the company has made changes to prevent this from happening again, and responded to our request for comment with the following message:
To promote a stable and secure environment on Twitter, you may not do, or attempt to do, any of the following while accessing or using Twitter:
Access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of Twitter, Twitterâs computer systems, or the technical delivery systems of Twitterâs providers (except as expressly permitted by the Twitter Bug Bounty program).
Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or network, or breach or circumvent any security or authentication measures (except as expressly permitted by the Twitter Bug Bounty program).
Interfere with or disrupt the access of any user, host or network, including, without limitation, sending a virus, overloading, flooding, spamming, mail-bombing Twitterâs services, or by scripting the creation of content in such a manner as to interfere with or create an undue burden on Twitter
[Internet Archive via The Next Web]
