The IT Nerd

Just when you think Elon Musk can’t find any new ways to make X/Twitter any worse than it already is, he surprises you and does just that. In this case according to The Verge, if you have a Twitter post before December 2014 apparently have had any links or Images in them deleted:

X, which was formerly known as Twitter until its recent rebranding, is having a problem displaying old posts that came with images attached or any hyperlinks converted through Twitter’s built-in URL shortener. It’s unclear when the problem started, but it was highlighted on Saturday afternoon in a post by Tom Coates, and a Brazilian vtuber, @DaniloTakagi, had pointed it out a couple of days earlier. 

As it is, it appears to affect tweets published prior to December 2014, judging by posts visible on my own account. No videos are affected (Twitter only added native image support in 2011 and built-in videos in 2016), but links to YouTube, for example, are now just text with a t.co URL that doesn’t work.

On Saturday afternoon, as Coates pointed out, the glitch claimed the picture from one of the most famous tweets ever (back when they were still called tweets), this selfie posted by 2014 Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres flanked by celebs like Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and others, taken during the show’s broadcast. It quickly became the “most retweeted ever,” with over 2 million shares on the platform. 

I haven’t seen any public comments from owner Elon Musk or X CEO Linda Yaccarino about the problem, but at some point on Saturday night / early Sunday morning, the picture in that post was restored. 

Despite speculation that it could be an intentional cost-cutting move by Musk, the fact that the actual media posted hasn’t been deleted suggests an error or bug of some kind, one of many that have arisen since last year’s takeover and mass layoffs.

First of all you’re not going to see any comment from Elon or Yaccarino on this or anything else that goes wrong with Twitter/X as that would force them to admit that Twitter is broken. Which they won’t ever do. I am going to assume that now that this is out in the public domain, this will get fixed somehow. But it illustrates how unstable the platform is. And if the rampant hate along with Elon’s “ready, fire, aim” mentality isn’t enough to make you run from Twitter, this is another reason to get off the platform.

This entry was posted on August 21, 2023 at 8:33 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.