X glitch wipes out most pictures and links tweeted before December 2014::Ellen’s famous ‘most retweeted’ selfie from the 2014 Oscars has had its image restored, but most old tweets have broken short links instead of the media or links that should be there.

  • KirbySSM@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Twitter, X, or whatever it’s currently called, did not respond to requests for comment.

    The Verge is fed up lol

    • FLeX@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Because of this fucking online press embedding tweets into every article, even weather reports

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Momentum. It’s still the most popular platform for many niches and it will stay popular as long as it’s popular…

      • redwall_hp@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And English speakers are only a fraction of the user base. Current events in the US social media bubble barely penetrate the general public in the US, let alone across international and language barriers.

        It’s probably the largest social media platform in Japan, for example.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          It's probably the largest social media platform in Japan, for example.

          Really? 😯 I’m surprised they don’t have a local solution, that’s interesting!

        • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I think you overestimate the user base.

          Unless you happen to be in one of the countries or niches where Twitter is really popular, you won’t reach a relevant amount of people on there.

          • HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
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            1 year ago

            That goes without saying, I mean in places like the US/UK/Japan etc, it’s useful. Many artists almost depended on it.

      • electrogamerman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “It will stay popular as long as it’s popular…”

        You dont say? Yall are making it popular. If you y’all stopped using it, then it will not be popular and it would die.

    • superflippy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I haven’t deleted my account - it’s 17 years old! But I also haven’t posted in a couple months other than saying I’ve moved to Mastodon. I said I’d hold on to the bitter end & I will. I’m not leaving, they’ll have to evict me.

        • tristan@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          I can’t speak for the previous comment but in my case they wanted me to remove 2fa (or pay to keep it) just to log in

          I didn’t remove it, and I’ve never been back

        • superflippy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s the principle of the thing. I’m not going to delete myself, pretend I wasn’t there for all those years. The record stands. (Except for any media posted prior to 2014, which now exists only on my personal cloud storage, I guess.)

          • Dee@lemmings.world
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            1 year ago

            More power to you I guess, I think our brains just work differently on this subject. I used TweetDelete and nuked my entire account a few months back. I was going to let it just sit there with no activity but then he did another stupid thing (I forget which thing) so I wanted my content completely off the platform.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Yes, but you’re not a celebrity, government official, weather station or corporate marketing office. The question is why they remain on ex-Twitter when they really need a more stable platform.

        It’s fine that common folk like Gab or Parler or Truth Social, but they’re not great for official business, And now, neither is the ex.

        • money_loo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Weird response.

          The question wasn’t “why are you the celebrity on twitter?”

          • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            There are still seven million MySpace accounts as of 2019. So yes, any half-functional social media platform is going to be utilized by rando loyalists.

            But Pre-Musk Twitter was the general announcement platform for most VIPs, what has been blighted with problems ever since Musk took over, and one-by-one, they’re departing, as ex-Twitter becomes increasingly brand-unsafe.

            So the question (as I read it) is not why is Twitter not empty? but why is Twitter still full well populated? Your answer because I like it doesn’t clear things up. I can find seven million people who still like MySpace.

            I think the answer is more nuanced than that. I also think as VIPs and services find alternative places to make their announcements and engage fans and constituents, we’ll see ex-Twitter bleed out its general population.

            • money_loo@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Your answer because I like it doesn’t clear things up.

              It really does, though. Especially if you’re not looking for some ulterior motive and you just enjoy the platform.

              I follow a bunch of scientists and I can’t think of another place that would allow me to, say, follow the LK-99 fiasco in real time the way twitter allowed me to.

              I was able to watch people synthesize stuff pretty much live.

              So to answer your question again, I like it, so I use it. I can only imagine lots of other people are also using it because they somehow like it.

              Again, hope that helps you understand something so simple.

              • FFarOut@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I can’t think of another place that would allow me to, say, follow the LK-99 fiasco in real time

                Wait until you find out about IRC…

  • Echo71Niner@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Haha, “glitch” about $10 million dollars in storage fee was cleared.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Anyone still using Twitter is a top tier masochist. It was always a pretty shit platform, but it’s being made fun of by the toilet and the dumpster now for how shitty it is.

    • hh93@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s more that finally it starts to show how stupid firing most of the staff was

      Most people in tech anticipated it to run fine for a while but then eventually stuff like this will show up more often because you don’t have people that actually understand the code anymore and which kind of side-effects to think about with changes

      • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        To zoom out even more: It’s just one more incident showing how fragile investor-sustained digital information systems are.

        Every website that came before the current crop of mega-scale privacy-invading behemoths also failed, and took down all their user data and history with them. Why would anyone expect Twitter to be any different?

          • mmagod@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            a piece of history i wish i could pull up and remind myself how far i’ve come in web design

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I had a Tripod page dedicated to a spider in my office I named Mr. Jibbles and took low-res pictures of him with my first digital camera (came free with a copy of Windows XP). I’d kind of like to see Mr. Jibbles again, but I’m sure he’s not as jibbly as I remember.

        • FFarOut@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Every website that came before the current crop of mega-scale privacy-invading behemoths also failed, and took down all their user data and history with them.

          Livejournal would like a word with you.

          Current mood: Amused 😄
          Current music: The sound of my own thoughts…

          • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            They’re from before my time. But they also hosted some art that I found after the fact that I really love, so I’m glad (and a bit surprised) to see the data is still up.

            That said, they’re owned and operated by Russians now. So…

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Man, if it wasn’t a typo I’d think you’re a fucking genius, that’s a really witty one

        I’m gonna steal that for all the times fascists go “oops, looks like I accidentally further fucked up society, wow I’m so clumsy haha totally accidental”

    • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Eh. This is on us. URL shorteners and Twitter in particular have always been scarily brittle and opaque,. With nobody actively maintaining the data, why would you think that it would be around forever?

  • Bappity@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    put someone in the server room with an axe and they could do less damage than Elon

  • sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    3-2-1 Rule:
    3 copies of the data.
    2 Different media types.
    1 of those off-site.

    If you’re relying on Twitter as the only place you have an image you care about, you’re making a bad choice.

    • brsrklf@compuverse.uk
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think anybody seriously used twitter as storage.

      Rather the point is that, similarly to every time a blogging platform or another online service with user content shuts down, a bit of internet history disappears with it. Links are broken, traces of opinions or bits of knowledge from another time are not available anymore…

      It’s not the end of the world, and at that point I wouldn’t really care if twitter disappeared completely overnight, but still, some stuff will be lost.

    • deong@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m not sure “Twitter is not a backup service for your personal hard drive” is a point that needed to be made.

  • skymtf@pricefield.org
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    1 year ago

    I am kinda without words, need to check if one of my favorite post are still up. The poet was made by a trans women before she knew she was trans. She was sitting in a boat and said I feel like a girl in a 90s movie. She quote posted it recently and said we made it girlie.

  • HellAwaits@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Sure, a “glitch”. More like further last ditch efforts to keep Twitter alive by cutting any costs necessary.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    It’s unclear when the problem started, but it was highlighted on Saturday afternoon in a post by Tom Coates, and a Brazilian vtuber, @DaniloTakagi, had pointed it out a couple of days earlier.

    As it is, it appears to affect tweets published prior to December 2014, judging by posts visible on my own account.

    On Saturday afternoon, as Coates pointed out, the glitch claimed the picture from one of the most famous tweets ever (back when they were still called tweets), this selfie posted by 2014 Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres flanked by celebs like Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and others, taken during the show’s broadcast.

    I haven’t seen any public comments from owner Elon Musk or X CEO Linda Yaccarino about the problem, but at some point on Saturday night / early Sunday morning, the picture in that post was restored.

    Despite speculation that it could be an intentional cost-cutting move by Musk, the fact that the actual media posted hasn’t been deleted suggests an error or bug of some kind, one of many that have arisen since last year’s takeover and mass layoffs.

    There’s also at least one other old tweeted image that still worked — the one posted to President Barack Obama’s account after winning his 2012 campaign for reelection, showing a hug between him and the First Lady.


    The original article contains 394 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 44%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!