X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday removed most pictures and linked tweeted before December 2014, amid speculations that it could be a cost-cutting move by its owner Elon Musk.
However, there is also a possibility of a technical glitch as actual content posted hasn’t been deleted.
Several users complained their tweets published prior to December 2014 were not visible anymore.
“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 posted on X.com.
Screenshot of a famous tweet by Ellen DeGeneres taken during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony in the crowd with various celebrities like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence also went missing from het tweet.
It quickly became the “most retweeted ever,” with over 2 million shares on the platform.
The image in DeGeneres’ tweet was later restored, but a reply shows that not everyone has been granted that privilege, reports The Verge.
However, one other old tweeted image still worked, the one posted to President Barack Obama’s account after winning his 2012 campaign for reelection, showing a hug between him and the First Lady.
Musk or X were yet to comment on the issue that has affected users globally.
The timing for removing most pictures and links that are broken seems related to changes Twitter made in 2016, adding “enhanced URL enrichment”.
This enhanced version provided a web site’s HTML title and description in the Tweet payload, along with Operators for matching on those.