Twitter ‘bug’ lets users smash 280-character limit and break the site for other people

Two people had their accounts temporarily suspended as a result

The Twitter application is seen on a phone screen August 3, 2017 (REUTERS/Thomas White)

Twitter users have managed to bypass the site’s tweet limit by posting updates that are thousands of characters long.

The majority of users can only send 140-character tweets on the micro-blogging site, but some can go up to 280 characters.

However, some users have found a way to go far, far beyond this.

Twitter users @Timrasett, @HackneyYT and @0x0ade all managed to break the site in spectacular style over the weekend, by posting extremely lengthy tweets.

The updates – @Timrasett, @HackneyYT wrote a short message in German, followed by incomprehensible nonsense, while @0x0ade posted the script from the Bee Movie – have since been taken down.

However, you can still see them here and here.

@Timrasett and @HackneyYT had their accounts temporarily suspended as a result of their activity, while @0x0ade said his tweet was causing Twitter to crash for users who saw it, forcing them to close it.

When asked to explain how he did it, @0x0ade wrote, “Links do count, but links always count the same, no matter how long they are. Normally, though, Twitter trims the links. I even had to retry multiple times because even links to nonexistent pages get trimmed, but only sometimes.”

Other users say they’ve also tried to pull off the trick, but Twitter hasn’t allowed them to.

“We are still trying to find bugs on Twitter. The 35,000 characters were just the beginning!,” wrote @HackneyYT in a subsequent post.

Last year, reports emerged claiming that Twitter was considering expanding the character limit for tweets to 10,000.

It, of course, hasn't done this, but is currently testing 280-character tweets with a select number of users.