Twitter glitch wipes out millions of photos and links from tweets – here’s how to check if your posts are affected

If you’ve had your X account (formerly Twitter) for more than nine years, you might want to check your old tweets.

Users have noticed that photos and links posted to the platform before December 2014 have been removed and replaced with dead URLs.

A well-known example is the Oscars selfie posted by Ellen DeGeneres in March 2014, who disappeared from her tweet, though it has since reappeared.

It’s unclear whether it’s an accident due to a technical problem at X or a deliberate cost-cutting effort to alleviate demand for corporate servers.

Musk has yet to address the issue, though he admitted in a message on Saturday that X “might fail” – shortly after saying he would remove the blocking feature.

If you have only joined X in the last 8.5 years, this new release will not affect you.

But if you’re a long-time user and have been posting tweets of your treasured photos, it might be worth checking to see if they’re still around.

To search for your own tweets from before December 2014, type “From:(your username) to:2014-01-01” into the Twitter search bar.

By doing so, MailOnline discovered that some images still appeared in tweets from before December 2014, but took screenshots in case their days are numbered.

It’s also worth it download your Twitter archivewhich allows you to save tweets and all media in it.

X’s latest issue affects posts with images, as well as hyperlinks converted via Twitter’s built-in URL shortener (t.co), according to the edge.

Tweets themselves are displayed, but it is their content that has problems displaying correctly.

Content appears as URLs, but is not clickable, and copying and pasting them into another search bar will only take you back to the original tweet.

X user Tom Coates, who detailed the issue in a series of messagescalled it “more vandalism” from the Twitter owner and “another cost-cutting exercise.”

“Twitter has now removed all media posted before 2014,” he said.

That’s — so far — almost a decade of photos and videos from the early 2000s removed from the service.

“Removed every image and video and replaced it with a dead link.”

In a post pasted below Coates’ first post, X said the missing images are “still stored on Twitter/X’s servers,” but the links are broken “at this time.”

Nevertheless, Coates pointed out that the images are “still being effectively removed from the public internet.”

It’s unclear if Musk’s team plans to restore the images from the tweets; MailOnline has contacted the company for more information.

It’s possible it’s just more temporary technical issues from the company, which has been experiencing outages believed to be due to tweaks to the site by developers.

Outages have been a fixture since Musk started running Twitter, leading to speculation that there aren’t enough staff to deal with the issues.

It comes as the billionaire owner admitted over the weekend in a surprisingly honest post that X “might fail.”

On Saturday he posted: The sad truth is that there are no great “social networks” right now.

“We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will do our best to make at least one.”

Musk recently caused a backlash by stating his intent to remove the ability to “block” other users over X, with the exception of private direct messages.

If enforced, it could mean users face more harassment and the consequences of more unregulated free speech.

While it remains unclear whether Musk will continue to disable the blocking feature, many users on the platform begged the billionaire to reconsider.

“Blocking is a critical peace of mind issue for many people as it generally encourages the cyberstalkers to move on,” said one X user.

Musk took over Twitter in October and just changed its name to X as part of plans to make it an “everything” app.

A shiny ‘X’ logo was installed at the platform’s San Francisco headquarters before being removed due to complaints from local residents.