I actually used to think character limits were a good idea. Sites like Mastodon, Akkoma, and Firefish are for microblogging. Not small, not mini, but micro. Posts are meant to be very small and quick to read
But the thing I’ve realized is that even people who have basically limitless character amounts still make small posts. We get the format now. Sure, the character limits might’ve been needed when it was a new concept to get people to actually write small posts, but people get the concept now. We don’t need the character limits anymore, and they are just annoying for the occasions that we do want to write bigger posts (this wouldn’t fit the Mastodon default 500 btw, it’s almost 800)
Just collapse long posts and add a button to expand them