Elon Musk, the proprietor of X – formerly known as Twitter – acknowledged on Saturday that the social media platform “may fail,” as a new glitch caused the loss of most pictures tweeted before December 2014.
“The sad truth is that there are no great ‘social networks’ right now. We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one,” Mr. Musk posted on X.
Since acquiring the company for $44 billion, the multibillionaire has been making bold changes, from laying off over three-fourths of Twitter’s workforce to his latest announcement that the platform’s feature to block other user profiles would be removed.
The rebranded platform, now known as X, has also encountered outages and glitches recently. The latest glitch appears to affect tweets containing images and links published before December 2014.
X seemed to struggle to display older posts with attached images or hyperlinks shortened using Twitter’s built-in link shortener. Notably, the widely shared “most retweeted” selfie from the 2014 Oscars by host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres was among the initially lost images. While this image has been restored, most tweets before December 2014 now have broken short links instead of the actual media or links.
“More vandalism from Elon Musk. Twitter has now removed all media posted before 2014. That’s – so far – almost a decade of pictures and videos from the early 2000s removed from the service,” Brazilian YouTuber Tom Coates posted on Twitter.
The glitch follows X’s deliberate move to slow down access to rival social media platforms’ sites such as Threads, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as news organizations like The New York Times, last week. X introduced a delay of approximately five seconds when users clicked on links leading to other websites.
Speculations arise that the recent glitch, which prevents access to old images, might be linked to X’s efforts to free up server space. However, this may not necessarily be an intentional move aimed at cost-cutting. Some users report being able to view their old images again, but the exact cause of the glitch remains unclear.
Carlo Juancho FuntanillaFrontend Developer, WordPress, Shopify
Contributing Editor
AMA ACLC San Pablo
