Twitter appears to have deleted all of the images that were uploaded to the site between 2011 and 2014. The issue was discovered Saturday by Twitter user Tom Coates.
Along with the loss of images, links that were created during the same time period using Twitter’s link shorter also no longer work.
Coates’ tweet about the issue has since had context added to it saying that images have disappeared and links are broken, but the data is still saved on Twitter's servers.
One of the tweets impacted is Ellen DeGeneres’ famous Oscars selfie, which generated over 2.8 million retweets and currently holds the title as the most retweeted post of all time. That particular image was restored on Saturday afternoon along with a tweet of Barack Obama hugging the First Lady after his relection in 2012.
The Verge notes that photos and links that were added in 2016—after Twitter made changes to how it handles images and links—all appear to work, suggesting that was a cutoff of some kind for this issue. That was also when Twitter added "enhanced URL enrichment" that showed previews for links and “native attachments,” which allowed the addition of photos without impacting the 140-character limit.
As of Sunday morning, X owner Elon Musk had yet to comment on the issue.
