Many images uploaded directly to X between 2011 and 2014 are not loading and links from those years that used Twitter's native shortening service are broken too

Twitter, the social media platform officially known as X, appears to have deleted all images from the website that were posted between 2011 and 2014.

Forbes 2023-08-21 Matt Novak

Context & Ripple Effects

The report concerns a failure in X's older archive layer: images posted directly during 2011–2014 and links using its native shortener stopped resolving. It follows a March disruption that also affected t.co links and image delivery, making the incident relevant to the platform's reliability as a record of past posts.

The immediate deletion concern was subsequently tempered when X said it had fixed an image-display bug and lost no data. Even so, the episode exposed how much historical material depends on X continuing to operate its proprietary media and link infrastructure.

First-order effects

People, publishers, and organizations relying on affected old posts lose access to embedded visual evidence and t.co destinations while the failure persists.
X must restore display and link resolution—or communicate a durable limitation—to preserve confidence in its historical archive and sharing infrastructure.

Second-order effects

Sites and researchers that cited or embedded affected posts face broken references, and may need to replace X-hosted material with copies held elsewhere.
The incident reinforces the risk for publishers using a platform-owned shortener as a permanent distribution link, particularly as X later reduced article-link context through headline-free link previews.

Third-order effects

If recurring failures in legacy media and redirect layers continue, social posts become less dependable as citable public records, shifting preservation toward independent archives and original publishers.
The broader pressure is toward treating social-platform embeds and short links as revocable infrastructure rather than durable web addresses; the scale of that shift depends on whether X's stated fix holds.

The trend: This is one instance of social platforms' proprietary distribution and archive layers becoming a weaker foundation for long-lived web references.

Discussion

@reporterzoe Zoe Schiffer on threads
Update: It looks like Twitter might not have deleted the data, but a bug in the latest deploy (related to the URL shortener) is causing pre 2014 media not to load...
@reporterzoe Zoe Schiffer on threads
“Guaranteed this is to save on storage costs.” - former Tweep
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on threads
I assume this is just plain old data loss due to a system failure given all of the people laid off and shutting down systems out of mindless cost cutting as opposed to anything intentional. I'm actually impressed it's taken almost a year for any failure like this to occur.
@adwright@mastodon.social @adwright@mastodon.social on mastodon
So the Xitter nuking of media and links between 2011 and 2014 means that even if you got your full archived account before Musk went apeshit, it has been destroyed. — If you got your Twitter archive within a certain time window you will have saved your posted media from this pe…
@reedmideke@mastodon.social Reed Mideke on mastodon
On my tweets, attached images seem to have broken between Nov 9 and Nov 11 2014 — From an twitter archive, the images attached to the Nov 9 tweet are still present at the full pbs.twimg.com “media_url” URL, but neither the pic.twitter.com “display_url” nor the t.co link work …
@brandrick.bsky.social Chris Brandrick on bluesky
You expect the odd bit of link rot from independent sites that are no longer online, but for a big corp to just break a load of links like this is super disappointing. [embedded post]
@fudge.org Jay Cuthrell on bluesky
The times of link rot have arrived for legacy images. Next up for deleterious changes? I'd wager Cards and then parts of Media Studio. [embedded post]
@melwell.bsky.social @melwell.bsky.social on bluesky
It's like watching HAL go down after Dr. Chanda removes the holographic glass drives one by one. [embedded post]
@westernspinster.bsky.social Rita L. Portela on bluesky
Lots of images are now gone from Twitter. — For those of us who used Twitter to bookmark things, & don't have a backup... images & videos, they are now gone pre 2014. — Check for yourself. I've lost family photos. — https://twitter.com/...
@tomcoates Tom Coates on x
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://twitter.com/search
@zoeschiffer Zoë Schiffer on x
“Guaranteed this is to save on storage costs.” - former Tweep
@illneil Neil Hartner on x
I can confirm all the media and links I posted before 2014 no longer work. What a weird thing to do unannounced.
@leahmcelrath Leah McElrath on x
That means the media from “Arab Spring”—during which Twitter played an important role for raising awareness about human rights violations and popular uprisings throughout the Middle East—is all gone now. He's literally erased history.
@martinsfp @martinsfp on x
This place is crumbling.
@fy4chan @fy4chan on x
I sincerely hope Tweeted photos and videos from such as the “Occupy” Admiralty, Mongkok, Causeway Bay and (the very short-lived) Tsim Sha Tsui locales of the 2014 Umbrella Movement will be saved/get archived!🙏🙏🙏
@btsthroughyears @btsthroughyears on x
Yes, I noticed this about 5 days ago? I was kinda hoping it's a temporary error. But no worries, I'll try to post more from those days from now on 👍
@rebel44cz Jakub Janovsky on x
This is crazy irresponsible BS by @elonmusk Whether out of incompetence or in order to save a few $, this is large-scale vandalism.
@tomcoates Tom Coates on x
@firasd Anyone want to ask @jack about how delighted he is by Elon's actions and how they all make total sense again? One of these days, something will surely puncture his fantasy world again and bring him back to reality.
@tomcoates Tom Coates on x
By the way - in 2014 Ellen Degeneres posted a selfie from the Oscars and it became the most retweeted photo of all time. That photo is now gone from Twitter. https://twitter.com/...
@tomcoates Tom Coates on x
(BTW - I've been working in and around social media for 20 years, most recently built a decentralized social network client funded by Bloomberg Beta. I'm currently looking for ways to push forward a more ethical and sustainable social media environment. If you need help, DM me.)
@tomcoates Tom Coates on x
@firasd @jack It's POSSIBLE that Twitter hasn't intentionally done this for cost-cutting, but just f***ed stuff up when doing their punitive link delays on the NYT and stuff last week. It's possible the redirect that sent http to https was broken in the process.
@tomcoates Tom Coates on x
I was notified about this @firasd - you can do a search of your own tweets by using the structure “from:{your user name} until:2014-01-01” in Twitter search.
@peanut_crunch @peanut_crunch on x
He's not just letting the site fall into disrepair, he's actively setting the Library of Alexandria on fire. Every experience you had on this site 2013 or earlier, it's gone. Hope you downloaded your archive data.
@elranno Marc Knelsen on x
Ive posted art in this website since 2011, and while I'm no longer super excited about my old art, it's still a piece of my journey shared here, that Elonshit just decided to erase. Fuck you Elon.
@mat @mat on x
Ellen Oscar selfie RIP?
@bfriedmandc Brandon Friedman on x
Twitter humiliated Musk and he won't be satisfied until he's destroyed it and digitally salted the earth
@jayrosen_nyu Jay Rosen on x
If ruining the product worked in some gross way — more ads! big profits! huge crowds! — it would be easier to understand. Maybe the pivot to vandalism and brand destruction has a logic, but it's not clear to me what that logic is.
@velodus @velodus on x
This is a good reminder that we should all download our Twitter data, especially because I think it's very, very likely that our old DM history is just gonna vanish out of nowhere one day like what happened to Reddit earlier this year.
@stealthygeek Patrick S. Tomlinson on x
You know when a restaurant starts cutting back hours and menu items then closes like three months later? Those vibes.
@rmac18 @rmac18 on x
It's unclear if this is a bug or intentional at the moment. But it has caused the photo from one of the most popular tweets ever, the Ellen DeGeneres Oscars selfie, to disappear. (h/t @mat) https://twitter.com/... [image]
@tvaziri Todd Vaziri on x
I hope y'all downloaded your archive.
@broderick Ryan Broderick on x
I can't even be snarky about this. This is just tremendously sad and only the beginning of what Twitter's slow cringe death means for the greater internet.
@bubbaprog Timothy Burke on x
It's much worse than that. They nuked all the t dot co links. Every single thing linked out to before April 2014 — be it an image, video, Vine, or linking to any other site — is now a dead link.
@faineg Faine Greenwood on x
Well, that's a vast amount of Internet history that's just been lit on fire without warning by that pompous, idiot shitlord.
@tomcoates Tom Coates on x
@firasd This is what Twitter pre-2014 looks like - every image and video removed and replaced with a dead link. Epic vandalism by Musk. Another cost-saving exercise presumably - and one which 100% should make you trust his statements Twitter is just about to make money. [image]
r/conspiracy r on reddit
X glitch wipes out most pictures and links tweeted before December 2014
r/EnoughMuskSpam r on reddit
X glitch wipes out most pictures and links tweeted before December 2014
r/DataHoarder r on reddit
X (formerly knows as Twitter) purged all media from posts from before 2014

Chronicles