A recent issue concerning tweets from before December 2014, with shortened links or images, was reported on X platform support. The problem led to broken links and images in these older tweets.
After investigating the matter, it was determined that tweets with links shortened by Twitter, and those with images, posted prior to December 2014 were affected.
The official X platform support account, @Support, confirmed the bug over the weekend. They assured users that no data or images were lost due to this issue. The bug has been fixed, and the complete resolution of the problem is expected in the coming days.
Although the post addressed the bug, it lacked specific details about its nature, the start date of the issue, and the reasons for the delay in resolving it. Further investigation revealed that Twitter’s changes in 2016 included using metadata to enhance tweets posted from December 2014 onward.
These changes facilitated data retrieval from linked webpages and allowed attachments without affecting a tweet’s character count. Consequently, only older posts were impacted by the bug.
This incident isn’t the first disruption experienced on the platform in recent months. In March, photos and links were temporarily affected due to API changes.
Additionally, the platform faced scrutiny for intentionally slowing down links to various competitors and websites associated with entities targeted by Elon Musk.