He never did. He was always saying Twitter should be like china's weibo which is hub for almost all online activity in china (twitter, instagram, facebook, amazon, etc.) I mean imagine the profits if you can control all social media and online shopping. It'd be like Windows or Google.

He thinks people are too stupid to realize weibo is so big as social media BECAUSE the government controls it to censor at will and eliminated competitors (for example the recent protests where the protesters were airdropping info got shut down by apple through pressure from chinese government).

Of course maybe he thought his government friends would help him out there too with subsidies and government contracts like with his other companies. (Like the people calling for twitter to be a "public utility.")

Twitter did not want to be the next facebook... It was meant for short statements.

But with 1000 characters, might as well consider Musk is innovating by copying Facebook.

Totally missing the point. For a smart guy he sure is dumb.

Character limit is there to create posts like:

1/4 title

2/4 subtitle

3/4 some thoughts

4/4 conclusion

You mean twitter is designed for brainfarts? In that case it might not be a bad idea to increase the character limit. At least give people the option to express some actually thoughtful content for a change.

Well then what's it for then? Because there aren't any good reasons for limiting conversation like that.

It hinders discussions. Important discussion and real, actually meaningful discussions cannot be had on Twitter currently.

Considering that Twitter only made a profit for two years in it's entire existence, perhaps they never even knew what they were good for.