How do they know if someone was going to tweet a longer sentence, like for example:
"Donald Trump is the worst president ever this country has ever had. He stole the election with help from the Russians and is running this country into the ground."
But knowing that they only get 140 chars, they just decided to tweet "Trump sucks! :-( And he's in bed with the Russians"?
You don't have to hit that 140 char limit too many times until you start self-censoring yourself and write shorter messages.
The network tab in Chrome does not seem to indicate they are collecting data for this. I would expect some sort of network activity as I type/reach the character limit, but I spot nothing.
That works for users using an official Twitter client who actually typed in the tweet and then edited it. It doesn't account for people who decided to enter something shorter because they knew what they wanted to say would hit the limit.
"Donald Trump is the worst president ever this country has ever had. He stole the election with help from the Russians and is running this country into the ground."
But knowing that they only get 140 chars, they just decided to tweet "Trump sucks! :-( And he's in bed with the Russians"?
You don't have to hit that 140 char limit too many times until you start self-censoring yourself and write shorter messages.