Many are speculating that the decision was made as an attempt to try to cut costs.
Almost a decade of videos, pictures and links shared on Twitter in the early 2000s are being deleted from the X platform in a move that many are speculating could be an attempt by Elon Musk to cut costs.
Images and links tweeted before December 2014 are disappearing from the social media platform.
That said, there are other speculations that the removal of the old posts on Twitter might not be a deliberate cost-saving move at all. Some have stated that there is the possibility that the content only appears to have been removed, but that it is a technical glitch that has made it appear that way. The reason is that that actual content posted hasn’t been eliminated.
A number of users have been posting on X that their old tweets aren’t visible anymore. That number began growing rapidly.
The text components of the posts remain, but the images originally posted on Twitter are gone.
“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,” posted Tom Coates on X.com
More vandalism from @elonmusk. 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.
For example, here’s a search of my media tweets from before 2014. https://t.co/FU6K34oqmA
— Tom Coates (@tomcoates) August 19, 2023
The post made reference to a famous tweet Ellen DeGeneres made during the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony. It originally included a picture in the crowd with a number of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. A screenshot of that post showed that the images are now missing from the post. That had once been the “most retweeted ever” tweet, with more than 2 million shares on Twitter alone.
Interestingly, the image from the Ellen DeGeneres tweet was later restored, but a reply was also made showing that this privilege would not be granted to everyone whose pictures and links were taken down from the old posts.
Also interesting was that the tweet posted to President Barack Obama’s Twitter account after winning the 2012 campaign for reelection and that included an image of a hug he shared with the First Lady was never affected by the issue.
By the time this article was written, neither X nor its owner Elon Musk had made any official comment on the issue affecting users worldwide.
