this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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Yep this.
It’s gotten to the point where a character limit is itself a seriously toxic part of big-social social media, up there with algorithms and shitty moderation choices. But all of the Twitter people don’t see it.
Sure there are threads through reply chains. No one reads the chain. The first post is all most will see. Context collapse and superficiality is inevitable with this simple constraint. The fediverse should move on. Sadly, mastodon is the only platform still dedicated to it and they’re 80% of the fediverse.
If you like short funny quips and shit posts, that’s fine, there’s no character minimum! With long character limits, short quips still abound. Instead, when necessary, you can opt in to longer form text when necessary.
I hate to break it to you, but the character limit being integrated into the UI is inconsequential against the general preferences of humankind. Your 3 paragraph, well thought out statement is already too long to garner the upvotes a 2 word post will get in reply regardless of how good a post it is.
The number of people I've come across who also dislike the character limit, the number of platforms that don't have it, the number of times people write long microblogging threads and the prior and continued existence of the "blogosphere" count against this defeatist pessimism IMO.
The truly dark take here, IMO, is that we shouldn't underestimate the power of a medium's configuration to shape not just the content and culture on it (that's obvious) but the way its users come to think.