That's the thing, though. We see these long, essay-like Twitter threads all the time because although it may not have been built with this use case in mind, people publish where they know the eyeballs are. And if the eyeballs are on Twitter, that's where people are going to publish, irrespective of how terrible the platform is for longer writing.
I know the character limit is a part of Twitter's ethos, but given that it is now a place where important information of longer character lengths is published, and given that it's a nightmare to read (or write) a thread of two dozen tweets, I really wish they'd consider giving some sort of better-suited home for this kind of content. Maybe they leave tweets at the current character length, but introduce some new product where longer stuff can be posted.
How about just show the first 280 characters bump the limit to 10k or 30k. The experience won't change at all for people skimming their twitter feed. They'll still only see what look like 280 character tweets.
I know there will a long list of replies of the opinion that this would kill twitter. There's no way to know except to try it and I wish they would. The 280 character limit is a net negative for society at large and I feel they already have the eyes so letting people write longer replies will only increase engagement IMO.
I know the character limit is a part of Twitter's ethos, but given that it is now a place where important information of longer character lengths is published, and given that it's a nightmare to read (or write) a thread of two dozen tweets, I really wish they'd consider giving some sort of better-suited home for this kind of content. Maybe they leave tweets at the current character length, but introduce some new product where longer stuff can be posted.