Twitter expresses dread about what new character count means for Donald Trump and White House policy

The president hasn't received the update yet

U.S. President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn after he returns to the White House on September 26, 2017 in Washington, DC (Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

Twitter users and Americans are horrified that Donald Trump may be about to start tweeting twice as much.

The US president – as well as every other Twitter user – will soon get access to tweets that are twice as long, allowing him to write 280 and not 140 letters and exclamation marks in his posts.

But for now, Mr Trump isn't allowed to use the feature. He's not one of the small group of people who have been given access to it.

That has not stopped fears that the president having access to more characters could also lead to more of the political turmoil that has been blamed partly on his Twitter account. A number of uses pointed out that given the policy implications of Mr Trump's account, any small tweak to the service like this one could have knock-on effects on the world stage.

But, for now, Mr Trump appears to have been left out of the trial. As such, he can still only tweet 140 characters at a time, and for anything larger will need to use the multiple tweets that he is becoming famous for.

That becmae clear in a tweet from Biz Stone, Twitter's co-founder. He responded to a tweet from a user who criticised the site for having given Donald Trump "two times more space instead of addressing the mess he was already doing with 140 characters.

"He's not in the test group," responded Biz Stone. The Twitter user joked that he was "glad you have fun with your answer while not addressing a critical governance problem". That was apparently a reference to Twitter's policy with regards to Mr Trump's tweets, which is that they will be left up as long as they are newsworthy – even if they are read as declarations of war.

Although Mr Trump has been excluded – apparently knowingly – from the test group, it is still possible that he can send 280 character tweets. Indeed, anyone can use a simple bit of code to get around the problem and get themselves into the test group – though that also requires using Twitter on desktop, and Mr Trump is understood to tweet primarily and perhaps exclusively from his phone.