Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of well-known firms such as Tesla and SpaceX, recently acknowledged the eventual demise of Twitter X. This admission coincides with a bug that caused images and links published prior to December 2014 to vanish. Musk addressed his concerns about the social media platform’s viability in a recent post on X. He acknowledged that the platform might not survive, echoing many projections. Despite this, he promised that attempts would be made to keep at least one successful social networking platform running.
Musk claimed on X that there are currently no great’social networks’. They may fail, as many have anticipated, but they will do all possible to ensure that there is at least one. Musk has made some significant adjustments to the network since acquiring Twitter for $44 billion and rebranding it as X. These include major layoffs, which have reduced Twitter’s employment by more than three-quarters, as well as the announcement of the discontinuation of the ‘block user’ tool.
However, these changes have been accompanied by a number of technological difficulties. The site has experienced many blackouts and malfunctions. The most recent of which affected tweets with images and links from before December 2014. The recently discovered bug seems to affect older postings that featured attached photos or hyperlinks truncated using Twitter’s built-in web link shortener. This resulted in the temporary removal of multiple photographs. Including Ellen DeGeneres’ famous Oscars selfie from 2014, which was previously the most shared tweet.
Though this image has been restored, most previous tweets prior to December 2014 continue to display broken short links. Rather than the actual media or URLs. The cause of this breakdown is unknown. With theories ranging from technical concerns to deliberate cost-cutting tactics to reduce server space. Users have been outraged by the issue, accusing Musk of committing further ‘vandalism’ to the site. Users, particularly those who have been on the network for a long time, are concerned about the removal of vital historical content. Fans of the South Korean boy band BTS expressed their dismay, fearing that photographs of the group had been lost. Similarly, reporters have discovered that photographs uploaded by Musk in 2012 and 2013 are inaccurate.
In response to these concerns, X has stated that these images remain on their servers. The broken t.co links appear to be the source of the problem. However, consumers’ concerns have not been soothed, as the photographs are still effectively removed from the public internet. Musk has yet to address this issue, adding to the suspicion and alarm among users. The ambiguity around X’s future, combined with the recent problem, has generated severe concerns about the platform’s viability and administration. While the technological faults may be transient, Musk’s and his team’s lack of communication has only added to users’ growing skepticism.
The platform’s future appears to be in jeopardy, with its success or failure having enormous ramifications for the broader social media ecosystem. It remains to be seen whether Musk’s lofty intentions for X will come to fulfillment.
