It is worth noting that not all photos uploaded during the 2011-2014 period have been affected, with a post from former US President Barack Obama in 2012 still having a visible image. — AFP
It appears that most photos uploaded between 2011 and 2014 to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, are no longer visible to users.
X user @tomcoates first claimed on Saturday (Aug 19) that all images uploaded prior to 2014 had been “removed from the service”, instead replaced by a broken short-link that leads users back to the same post.
Videos have not been affected by the issue, as native support for video on the platform was only added later in 2016.
One such missing photo is a selfie posted on Ellen DeGeneres’ profile from the 2014 Oscars alongside a number of other celebrities. It then became the most retweeted (or reposted) post on the website for a period of time.
The photo on the post has now instead been replaced by a short-link (http://t.co/C9U5NOtGap) that loops back to the post without the original image.
According to a Community Note (the platform's fact-checking tool) highlighted on the post from @tomcoates, the missing photos are still saved on X's servers, though the links to those image files "appear to be broken at the moment".
The same Note mentions that the original files are still available on the social media platform's servers, though requiring a specific link to the image in question on twimg, the website's in-house image hosting service.
It is worth noting that not all photos uploaded during the 2011-2014 period have been affected, with a post from former US President Barack Obama in 2012 still having a visible image.
This comes after Twitter owner Elon Musk posted that the feature that allowed users to "block" other users on the platform would be removed.
