Twitter Exploit Let Two Pranksters Post 30,000-Character Tweet (engadget.com) 65
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 The original 30,396-character tweet has been archived and can be viewed here.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."
The limit is stupid anyway (Score:2)
I just can't fathom why anyone would use such a pathetically limited platform.
The limit (Score:4, Funny)
I just can't fathom why anyone would use such a pathetically limited platform.
Hey, 280 characters ought to be enough for anybody.
Re:The limit (Score:4, Funny)
I just can't fathom why anyone would use such a pathetically limited platform.
Hey, 280 characters ought to be enough for anybody.
Really? My computer has a whopping 640K of RAM and I should be limited to 280 character messages?
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Twitter is so shittily coded that your 640K of RAM wouldn't even handle their header file.
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What's that, 2.6K per character? Probably not enough the way emojis are going. Just wait, they'll be embedding sounds in them next.
140 characters (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: 140 characters (Score:1)
You have an Android device and still tweet with text message? Why? Why do it, why buy the phone why let people know? Why?
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Actually, lots of people send longer Tweets in the form of screenshots.
I believe it's the modern equivalent of pasting a picture into an MS Word document before emailing it.
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It is very difficult to be concise and have something worth saying at the same time. That is why almost all of the tweets I have read seem rather dumb.
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$ echo -n "It is very difficult to be concise and have something worth saying at the same time. That is why almost all of the tweets I have read seem rather dumb." | wc -c
151
I suppose you're right. Or at least you've exceeded your 140 character limit; it's a subjective matter if what you said was worth saying.
Re: (Score:2)
True, but on Twitter your post would boil down to something akin to, "140 chars R enuf bcuz it is limit @ SMS" and maybe, if you're a good user, a link to the SMS specs that no one would click anyway. No further explanations or dissemination, just a sound bite with little to no context and use.
Sane example (Score:2)
I've not had any problems with the 140 char limit.
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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.
And therein lies the problem. Sound bites. That's all you get out of Twitter. Nothing deep, no interesting communication, nothing of substance.
But the users, audience, and content is pretty well versed in the 140 character limit.
It would take me two tweets to tell someone the title of my master's thesis. Two entire tweets! Here is something with deep meaning to me, something I might love to share with someone, and I can't even efficiently tweet the fucking title! We spent weeks on that title, trying to summarize the research as concisely as possible. But when your research needs long, tech
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Yet your post and my response fits easily into that limit.
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That is only enough for short messages. But what if I wish to speak in detail about any complex matter? That would require me to be more long-winded. This platform's artificially imposed limitations hinder any rational discussion with more nuance than a few snippets. I think it's
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Post the article on a blog or a pastebin like Twitlonger. Then Tweet the headline and a link to the article.
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example: Here's my easy to understand paper that proves climate change. http://someurl/ [someurl] #notahoax #climatechange
there, that's one way you could change the world with a tweet.
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I noticed that the Mastodon(tm) FOSS social networking platform apparently *CHOSE* to have some 500 character limit.
500 characters is close to the maximum length of a message in Internet Relay Chat.
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Like SMS. Even more limited!
It's not any fun (Score:3)
Unless you tweet the entire contents of "War & Peace". Or maybe the Twitter TOS.
It's got imanges and video clips anyway (Score:2)
Whatever. As soon as they started allowing anything other than text, they were sort of doing that anyway. You could encode text in an image and use a front-end to get big tweets, or do what a lof of people do and post images of text (yuck), and get huge ugly tweets with the normal front end. It's all a bunch of silliness. If you don't lock it down to text, there's not much of a limit. Even then, you've got the Trumpian... tweets that continue... because I'm too... bigly to adhere to... your limit.
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Animate GIFs of my latest novella? That's sure to get me followers and re-tweets.
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Bring back the blink tag!
subject (Score:5, Insightful)
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He'd just link to Fox News clips; that's where he gets most his information (cough).
Why is this News.???... (Score:1)
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Because Twitter doesn't use a varchar(140) field in its database to store tweets.
In a way, it's quite cool that this worked. It's not cool the users were banned and had to apologise for allowing Twitter let them do it.
Re:subject (Score:4, Funny)
Because not one, but two (!) Twitter users apologised.
If that's not news, I don't know what is.
Re: (Score:2)
Just have fun with it.
In other news - writing Secure Code still is a thing. And: "where there's a will - there's a way" to get around anything you attempt to build.
First come the pranksters having fun. Then come the hackers who realize "hey - look at what is possible!"
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As was pointed out ... (Score:3)
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Q: "You have been staring at that screen for a half hour! What are you doing?"
A: "Hang on, I'm waiting for the verb!"
That's by design (Score:2)
Because Twitter autoshortens URLs you can post one as big as you want, no "hack" needed. That's sort of the point of URL shortening. You can argue that the design is bad, but I still don't see how this is news.
"Churn & Shoe" ratio record breaker? (Score:2)
Compared to churning butter or shoeing a horse, the injection of this 30k tweet may be the most arbitrary and arcane human endeavor to date, stealing the crown from Bitcoin.
In order to fully grasp the "churn & shoe" ratio try to delineate the advances that have led to a point, and identify jump-off points where technology has opened up or closed off human potential.
OPENED UP: From electrons skidding through wires, distance communication, analog voice impulses, time domain digital pulses, store and forwa
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SMS developers were concerned that digital text traffic from cell users would disrupt voice communication and imposed a character limit.
Not quite. SMS was originally a kind of by-product of voice-only GSM, using the control channel for extra message data when it was free of other signals. Basically empty slots between the voice packets. This also explains why they are relatively expensive, since there's a lot of total data traffic per each actual message.
The initial concept also didn't involve phone-to-phone messages, it was more about broadcasting things like weather or traffic reports. In fact, my first GSM phone could only receive, no
Sigh (Score:1)
This is why we can't have nice things...