MENLO PARK, California –
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke Tuesday at a press conference about the future of his brainchild social networking giant. Zuckerberg’s ideas came as a great shock to the audience of reporters, who were expecting a minimal change like switching the dull and in-need-of-replacement color scheme. Instead, it was announced that as of August 1st, 2015, all new Facebook posts will be under a restrictive 175 character limit.
The current limit is a mere 63,206 characters per post, which allows for users to write anything from a brief status to an excessively long piece of dry literature. Facebook had received many complaints recently about unnecessarily long posts that slowed down the social networking experience and annoyed multiple users.
Another reason behind the upcoming change is Zuckerberg’s concern with the welfare of many of Facebook’s teen users.
“With the new character restriction in place, we hope to preserve young lives that shouldn’t be destroyed simply because Janie said something about Sallie’s ex,” Zuckerberg remarked. “A large percentage of dangerous and life-threatening teen drama gets started and is antagonized on Facebook. With the character restriction, hate posts and threat posts can be diminished in their size and severity. 175 characters is more than enough to get your point across, while still being better than Twitter’s 140. We always want to be better than Twitter.”
As for Messenger, Zuckerberg also has a plan. “Before 2016, I plan on imposing a similar or equal restriction for Messenger, as well as a screening of all messages sent through Messenger with hopes of preventing tragedies caused by teen drama.”
Zuckerberg plans to receive much harsh criticism around his restrictive decision, but sees that the change will be worthwhile without being much of a detriment to his finances. “I’m already the 11th richest bastard in America. Why would I even blink if I lost a billion dollars?”
Lisa Evans, a reporter at the press conference, gave her two cents about the issue in her own lengthy Facebook post. “All our freedoms are being taken away. Even Facebook is restricting our freedoms of speech and expression. Sure, it will save some lives and speed things up a bit, but Facebook’s members may not be willing to make this change,” Evans said.