Elon Musk-owned X suffers glitch affecting images, links on posts from before 2014

Elon Musk’s X glitch: Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has suffered a glitch that is causing problems for the microblogging platform in displaying images and hyperlinks in tweets that date back to before December 2014. The links that have been affected are those that were shortened by Twitter’s built-in URL shortener, for example those leading to YouTube videos, with the old posts now just showing the text of shortened t.co URL that does not have a working hyperlink. The actual timeline of when the glitch began is unknown, but it came to light this weekend. The glitch has not impacted any attached videos, likely because native video support was added by Twitter only in 2016, while the support for native images had begun in 2011. 

The issue came to light on Saturday after Tom Coates pointed out that the image of Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie with a group of celebrities including Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence taken during 2014 Oscars ceremony had been removed from the most retweeted post. 

While owner Elon Musk and COO Linda Yaccarino have yet to comment on this glitch, the image was restored some time during the weekend. Global speculation pegs this removal on Musk’s strategy to cut costs, the fact that the actual media have not been deleted point towards the possibility that this was most likely a bug. This is also the most plausible explanation considering this bug is not the first to emerge on the microblogging platform ever since Musk’s takeover of Twitter and subsequent mass layoffs last year.