The nebulous benefits of Twitter Blue have acquired a new perk—the ability to upload two-hour videos. Perhaps unsurprisingly, piracy ensued.
The newest feature for Twitter Blue subscribers is the ability to upload two-hour length videos. That expands Twitter Blue subscribers’ video upload capabilities from the previous 60-minute limit. Other changes include increasing video size from 2GB to 8GB and allowing video uploads via iOS. If all of that sounds like it makes it easier to push pirated content to the platform, that’s because it does.
Within hours of the announcement, one user replied to Elon Musk’s announcement with the full Shrek 3 movie attached. “f*ck it. shrek the third,” the tweet reads, with the movie attached. As of the time of writing this article, the movie has since been removed on a copyright claim.
A bootleg version of the Super Mario Bros. Movie also appeared on Twitter, though it was uploaded in two parts to get around the then one-hour video limit. Now an entire feature film (under two hours) can fit within Twitter’s upload parameters—for $8 a month.
It’s unclear why Elon Musk feels like increasing the video limit for Twitter is a sound business strategy. Unlike competitors, Twitter doesn’t yet have the capacity to serve ads over longform content. Musk teased a general monetization program on Twitter in February 2023, but nothing has actually materialized from that promise.
The decision is also baffling because Twitter’s video player is meant to display short-form video content. It doesn’t remember where you stopped watching if you click away, so pausing and resuming a two-hour clip is currently impossible. The copyright detection system on Twitter is also abysmal compared to systems like YouTube’s Content ID. The Shrek movie stayed up for an hour and a half before it garnered enough attention to be taken down.