38 LAWYERMONTHLY JANUARY 2023 whether it would be possible to post full-length videos as well. To which Musk replied: "We can do 42 min chunks at 1080 resolution now for new Blue, so you could break up a longer video. The 42 min limit should be fixed next month." Crucially, Musk tweeted that once long-form material could be posted, it would be "Followed by creator monetization for all forms of content". Allowing creators to earn money from material posted online would be a major shift for Twitter in a number of respects; first, because it would fundamentally change the microblogging nature of Twitter. Although the original character limit of 140 characters was increased to 280 in 2017, it has remained a short-form medium, which favours concision and pithiness. Longer texts would remove that distinguishing feature. Similarly, allowing videos and other material to be posted would move Twitter in the direction of becoming a rival to YouTube and TikTok. However, as Twitter becomes more like those other services, some people might find less reason to stay on Twitter, since it would be no different from them. Twitter's active user base of several hundred million is considerable smaller than that of YouTube, which has 2 billion active users, and of TikTok, with around 1.8 billion users. If Twitter becomes a direct rival to YouTube and TikTok, businesses may prefer to place their advertising with the more popular services. The dramatic rise of hate speech on Twitter, evident since Musk bought it, could be another incentive for both businesses and individuals such as creators to move to the other platforms. A potential problem with being able to post long-form material is that it makes Twitter a more attractive way of sharing unauthorised copies. Even before Musk's new approach has been implemented, people have been sharing full-length films by
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