Elon Musk’s Twitter Just Deleted All Photos and Links Before 2014

Formerly known as Twitter, X is currently grappling with an issue showing any posts with images or hyperlinks shortened with Twitter’s built-in URL shortening tool. This issue has effectively wiped out all such content posted on Twitter before 2014.

While the precise cause of this problem remains unclear, it garnered attention on a Saturday afternoon when Tom Coates posted about it. Additionally, a few days prior, a Brazilian vtuber by the handle @DaniloTakagi had already drawn attention to this matter.

No videos seem to have been affected by this issue (Twitter only gained native image and video support in 2011 and 2016, respectively) and YouTube links that were shortened by Twitter are now just plain text.

As highlighted by Coates, the glitch had a notable impact, affecting an iconic tweet from the era when they were still referred to as “tweets.” This particular tweet featured a selfie shared by Ellen DeGeneres, the host of the 2014 Oscars, alongside celebrities like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, taken amidst the broadcast of the event.

This was one of the most popular tweets of all time, gaining over 2 million retweets. Thankfully, the image was restored around Sunday night. There haven’t been any public comments regarding this issue from Elon Musk or the CEO Linda Yaccarino.

While there has been speculation that this action might have been a deliberate cost-saving measure by Musk, the presence of the unchanged media content implies the occurrence of an error or glitch.

This occurrence is just one of several issues that have emerged since the takeover and subsequent large-scale workforce reductions that transpired last year.

Via: The Verge