Is the #Mastodon 500 character post length limit still meaningful in 2025?
Originally, Twitter introduced a 140 character length limit in 2006 because of the technical limitations of old school SMS texts which were used by the Twitter system back in the day.
But is there still a real technical advantage to the limit now, two decades later?
Because if not, I would certainly prefer not having to split my posts into multiple posts.
@randahl Site admin's choice as I remember.
@randahl
It’s not a mastodon limit. It’s a mastodon.social limit.
I have a 1,720 character limit on Mathstodon because my admin is super cool! 😎
Run your own server and set your own limit.
@randahl my favorite thing about my self-hosted #GoToSocial account ( @elena) is that I set a 2500 character limit and I never have to do threads anymore...
@randahl I agree, I think the limit is too limiting and annoying. I hate being limited from outside. The 1 thing i liked about FB is the higher symbol threshhold. Multiple posts about 1 topic are not "sticking to the core" but just super annoying & intransparent.
@randahl there's always some technical upper limit that relates to the chosen max toot size. Lower upper limits have ux consequences, which some have pointed out can be considered positive.
I like small and slow changes in such fundamental properties of a system for those reasons.
@randahl one of the reasons to be on infosec.exchange. 11000 characters.
@randahl I believe the limit makes sense. As others have said, constraints foster creativity.
While the compatibility of Mastodon with other ActivityPub implementations means that we occasionally see longer form posts, I believe not having the limit on #Mastodon would be antithetical to the platform. It is micro-blogging for a reason.
I understand why “keeping the audience” makes sense, but that’s not how one should think about Mastodon.
@randahl I do not see any technical reason. Many or almost all other Fediverse softwares allowing more than 500 characters. And Mastodon can handle it when receiving longer messages.
Btw. there are some instances that are using Mastodon as base and allowing for more than 500 characters. Most prominent is Glitch-SOC https://github.com/glitch-soc/mastodon. You can change to those instances.
And don’t forget to ask @Mastodon! The team needs to know that folks want to have larger messages.
@randahl Mathstodon.xyz has a 1729 character limit!
The parameters should be a blessing.
@randahl I find encountering large walls of text off putting and somewhat rude. I'll follow a link if I'm interested, but the 500 characters is a trailer for that link. I tend to block/mute when I encounter long postings.
My host has configured the character limit to ELEVEN THOUSAND characters. In spite of my verbosity I've never even vaguely approached that limit.
The only consideration in setting the limit is storage requirements.
Find a host that is more lenient! Many are. No doubt you will HATE the migration process and what you have to leave behind.
@randahl To be clear, it’s not a Mastodon limit, but your instance setting. Just switch to an instance that has a 10000 character limit setting and be happy!
The limit begun technical and accidentally wound up being a behavior. Short notes have a function. Long posts have a function. Threads have a function. Shoehorning all of them to the same content type would be counterproductive. LinkedIn and Threads are doing the best design here. Twitter was opinionated, X is not. Mastodon just copied - and has broken ActivityStreams content in the mean time by abusing Summary as a CW.
@randahl
@randahl mstdn.dk has a limit of 1000 which is usually enough for me, I occasionally have to edit myself to go under the limit but I like the challenge.
Can't speak to the technical side, but post length is critical when on a mobile device. If I am on my phone and I hit an accursed endless wall of text, I'm likely to mute the poster so I can get beyond it. It just comes across as self-indulgent.
@randahl It's useless now. It only shows 500 or so and adds a "more" for instances that raised the limit, anyway. It's not like timelines are long. I raised my instance to 5000. Many have raised it to 10,000 and some even more.
@randahl Oddly enough, I *like* the limit. When reading others' posts, I know what I'm getting in to. When writing my own, I know how much I have to work with.
I write multi-post threads fairly often. I really value the pressure to compress each post in to a single coherent paragraph.
@GeePawHill @randahl
Same. I like being forced to distill my thinking to its essence
There are some stories I'd like to tell that I need to consider how to thread. But character limits really are an excellent editor
