Twitter is trying to fix something that was never broken.

On September 26, 2017, Twitter announced that they would test changing the limit of characters per tweet from 140 to 280.  In their announcement, Product Manager Aliza Rosen cited limits posed by having such a small character count onto most languages, including English, as the reason for the proposed change.

Despite their seemingly noble intentions, Twitter may be doing more harm than good.

Twitter hopes to roll out the experimental tweet length in the coming weeks, and giving the new option to only a few accounts. Twitter claims that 9% of tweets in English reach the previous 140 character limit, much higher than the 0.4% of Japanese tweets. At first glance, it may seem that the change has purpose, and may even be necessary.

It would be necessary had Twitter users not found a natural way to escape the character limit for longer tweets: replying to your own tweets. Called threading, the method is commonly used for communicating longer messages.  Threads can be long enough to become “tweet storms.”

Another common workaround is taking a screenshot of a note written in the notes app, which has even fewer limitations. Twitter users have been doing this since the creation of the platform, and shows that users do not need more characters to express themselves.

Most importantly, this change may ruin what made Twitter unique in the first place. While Facebook prioritized interpersonal connections and Instagram focused itself on sharing photography, Twitter filled a niche of quick access to news, sports, comedy, and people you’re interested in.

Furthermore, the 140 character limit created the perfect environment for its users to communicate, whether they might be media outlets with millions of followers tweeting out an article, or just a students venting about homework. It seems unnecessary to fix an issue which affects only 9% of tweets, especially when the “solution” is such a major overhaul.

Twitter may be misdirecting its efforts to fix what users really want. The organization has recently come under fire for not doing enough to prevent anonymous spam accounts. These accounts are run by computers, and can be used to do everything from write tweets to retweet other tweets. Most notably, accounts like these were allegedly used to sway the 2016 United States presidential election. Engadget points out that the transition from 140 characters to 280 took a great deal of energy, resources which could have been focused on preventing the effectiveness of bots.

If not doubling the character limit, what else can be done to correct the “problem” of a tweet reaching its length limit? Perhaps a less drastic increase in characters would have been better received. Going from 140 characters to 200 would surely resolve the majority of complaints about the shortness of tweets. A workaround which may have been more difficult than just lengthening tweets would be a feature which allows users to link their tweets together more easily.

At this point, only users can prove Twitter wrong.