Prakhar Dobhal, Pune
The largest rebranding, which brought in some significant changes, has been occurring with X (formerly Twitter). Other than the recent payment to users whose tweets had more than 5 million impressions, not everyone has been pleased with the adjustments. As a result of the most recent upgrade to X, images shared before 2014 are no longer visible on the platform.
Tom Coates, a user, wrote about the photo removals on Twitter, which caused the news to initially go viral. He verified that links no longer function and that all his personal images from the site from mid-2011 to 2014 have been erased.
The Verge reports that any pictures or links sent on Twitter using the integrated URL shortener are no longer visible there. Therefore, the link is either unavailable or the image doesn’t display at all. The tweets are still there, but the picture or link in the message is hidden. For instance, as Coates noted, Ellen DeGeneres’ infamous Oscar selfie is no longer viewable. With 2.8 million reposts and 2 million likes, this selfie featuring celebrities Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep was once the most shared tweet. You can notice that the image is no longer displayed if you open the tweet.
Since neither X nor Elon Musk have provided an explanation, it is still unclear why this is taking place. The Verge reports that this appears to affect postings from before 2014 as a result of certain modifications Twitter made in 2016. In 2012, extended URL enrichment was introduced, which “automatically expands shortened URLs that are included in the body of a Tweet, and includes the resulting URL as metadata within the payload.”
According to several users on the Datahoarder Reddit thread, which studies data preservation in the digital age, Twitter may have broken something in an attempt to move the website to X.com, which Twitter owner Elon Musk has owned for a while. But as of right now, that’s just a logical hunch and hasn’t been verified. Another common notion, which hasn’t been officially verified by Twitter, is that the company is trying to cut costs on picture hosting expenses.