The selfie was clicked when Ellen Degeneres hosted the Oscars.
Elon Musk, who bought Twitter (now known as X) last year, has made several changes to the social media platforms. He made the coveted blue tick paid, limiting the number of posts non-verified users can see and announcing plans to turn it into an everything app. Some of these changes and updates have shocked X users, like the disappearance of television host, actress, writer and producer Ellen Degeneres’ Oscars selfie. Clicked in 2014, when she hosted the Academy Awards presentation, it “broke Twitter” amassing millions of views.
The photo disappeared because of an update to the social media platform by breaking t.co links used to share images, according to Indy 100.
Tech writer Tom Coates spotted the issue on Saturday, noting that “all media posted before 2014” had been removed from Twitter/X – albeit with some exceptions, such as Barack Obama’s tweet celebrating his being elected for another four terms in office.
The decision made X users angry.
“Why remove our ability to see our posts, memories, and literal historical events from twitter? With no warning at all,” commented one user.
“Guaranteed this is to save on storage costs,” said another.
“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,” a third user commented.
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. https://t.co/CAEy2YFI2d
— Velodus (@velodus) August 19, 2023
However, some users pointed out a few hours later that it happened because of a bug and the issue has been resolved.
But during this time, #TwitterDeletesPhotos had already started trending.