Large chunk of X content from Twitter era prior to 2014 December had disappeared. And then...

Users of social media platform X encountereda situation a couple of days ago, where images and links shared prior to December 2014- when it was known as Twitter- disappeared.

Tom Coates, identified as an X user, was the firstto notice this issue and subsequently shared his findings regarding posts from that specific timeframe. His discoveries revealedthat images and links wereabsent from these older posts. Whether it's a malfunctioning hyperlink or an image that hadbecome invisible, the content wasno longer accessible.

One prominent illustration of this problem was the well-known Oscar selfie originally shared by Ellen DeGeneres, featuring celebrities like Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep. This particular image, once the most retweeted tweet with 2.8 million reposts and 2 million likes, was not visible on the platform for a significant period.

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X says it 'fixed the bug'

On Tuesday (Aug 22), the @Support account at X said in a post that they had fixed the bug.

"During the weekend, we encountered a glitch that prevented the display of images dated before 2014. It's important to note that no images or data were lost during this incident. We have addressed the glitch, and it will be fully resolved in the coming days," the post said.

Theannouncement lacked specific information regarding the nature of the bug, its initiation date, or the reasons for the unspecified timeline for resolution.

The Verge website had discovered that alterations made by Twitter in 2016 employed metadata from tweets posted starting in December 2014 onward to augment additional data from linked webpages and facilitate attachments without affecting a tweet's character count.

Consequently, it was exclusively earlier posts that were affected by this bug.

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The root of the issue to certain alterations Twitter made in 2016, specifically related to the implementation of expanded URL enrichment in 2012. This feature was designed to automatically expand shortened URLs included in the body of a tweet and include the resulting full URL as metadata within the tweet's payload.

Subsequent improvements in URL enrichment were introduced, which went a step further by displaying a website's HTML title and description directly in the tweet payload.

In essence, the problem observed on Twitter can be attributed to the platform's efforts to enhance user interactions and the way shared web content is presented. The intention behind expanding shortened URLs and providing additional context through HTML titles and descriptions was to offer users more information and a richer multimedia experience when viewing tweets, reported the Verge.

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