A Twitter glitch briefly wiped out a trove of images including some of the most memorable moments shared on the platform.
Users of the rebranded service, now known as X, started noticing on Friday that images posted before 2014 were no longer displaying in tweets.
As a result, some of the most popular photos shared on Twitter were briefly inaccessible, including Ellen DeGeneres’s Oscar night selfie, pictures from the Arab Spring, and images shared by former world leaders such as Barack Obama.
Twitter has suffered a series of glitches since Elon Musk took over the platform last October and gutted its workforce. The entrepreneur said the changes were intended to help keep the company afloat.
In July, Musk briefly limited the amount of tweets viewers could see to combat “extreme levels of data scraping”. Last week, the company was accused of slowing down links to news sites and social media rivals Musk has openly criticised.
Hours after the latest issue came to light, Musk acknowledged the existential threat the platform is facing.
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) March 3, 2014
“The sad truth is that there are no great “social networks” right now,” he tweeted. “We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one.”
Neither Musk, nor current Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, have commented on the latest glitch.
The sad truth is that there are no great “social networks” right now.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2023
We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one.
The abrupt disappearance of older images was spotted by technology consultant Tom Coates, who tweeted that “almost a decade” of media was removed from the service. His post has since been viewed more than 15.5 million times. Brazilian user @DaniloTakagi had first pointed out the bug on Thursday, August 17.
The historical images are still stored on Twitter’s servers, according to a community note attached to Coates’ post from Twitter’s voluntary fact-checkers. By Sunday, some of the images had reportedly been restored.
More vandalism from @elonmusk. Twitter has now removed all media posted before 2014. Thats - so far - almost a decade of pictures and videos from the early 2000s removed from the service.
— Tom Coates (@tomcoates) August 19, 2023
For example, here’s a search of my media tweets from before 2014. https://t.co/FU6K34oqmA
The glitch marks the latest crisis for the besieged platform. Within months of Musk taking the reins, he began charging for previously free features after a precipitous drop in advertising on Twitter.
Despite the financial challenges, current CEO Linda Yacarrino recently claimed the company was close to breaking even.
