Twitter has been updated to allow for two-hour videos up to a maximum file size of 8GB – the latest perk that Elon Musk has made exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers.
Normal Twitter users are limited to just 512MB video uploads, with a maximum video length of two minutes and 20 seconds. Speaking from experience, this has always seemed like enough for Twitter, given that the site is text-based. Unlike Instagram or TikTok, visual content has never been the main attraction of the bird app. You can, of course, post photos, videos and GIFs, but these are secondary to the site’s main form of content – which is text.
But no, Twitter’s owner Elon Musk thinks subscribers will want to post longer videos on the app.
Twitter Blue Verified subscribers can now upload 2 hour videos (8GB)!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2023
Just before this announcement, it had been widely reported that entire movies had been popping up on Twitter – in particular, the Super Mario Bros. movie, which is still in cinemas. These videos are uploaded by Twitter users, and it becomes a game of content moderation whack-a-mole to take them down.
Anyway, what purpose will Twitter Blue subscribers put their new two-hour video privileges towards? Well, apart from full-length movies, most of what I can see has involved stale memes and looped videos. You could have just used a GIF.
Since November, Musk has seemed inclined to take YouTube on, with an interest in building greater video features into Twitter. Earlier this month, former Fox host Tucker Carlson announced that he would be making a show for Twitter. Perhaps this change to video uploads is to make it easier for folks like Carlson to do this.
Whether or not the movie posting will eventually spell legal trouble for Twitter, time will tell. Twitter already has a big legal battle to fight with its former CEO, so how about another with assorted entertainment conglomerates?
Side note from reporting on this: don’t give yourself the dissatisfaction of scrolling through the replies to an Elon Musk tweet. It’s not worth the pain.