Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter , now renamed X, said the social networking site “may fail.” The post comes shortly after a bug was discovered that caused to be deleted photos posted before December 2014
Specifically, the billionaire made a post on the platform, which said: “The sad truth is that there are no perfect ‘social networks’ right now. We may fail, as many have predicted, but we will do our best to ensure that at least one exists.”
Over the weekend, a bug on the platform resulted in the deletion of photos and the malfunctioning of links in posts made before December 2014. The posts showed broken links instead of the previously existing images.
See also: Twitter – X: Deleted photos posted between 2011-2014
User Tom Coates posted a post alerting people to the problem, although several users had also noticed the change. Coates even made a scathing comment, calling it “another act of vandalism by Musk.” He suggested that the move could be a cost-saving measure.
Among the photos affected was Ellen DeGeneres ' famous selfie from the 2014 Oscars, which was the most retweeted photo in the world. However, the photo was later restored
Some users assumed that the error was caused by an attempt to save costs on data storage, while others attributed it to changes made to the platform in 2016 when “enhanced URL enrichment” was added to display previews for linked websites and attachments.
Others believe that this is a bug due to the constant changes it makes to Twitter-X and its insufficient staff (after the mass layoffsthat Elon Musk carried out when he bought the company).
See also: Twitter: Will make dark mode the default option
It's worth noting that since the platform came under Elon Musk's control, there have been several glitches. Just last week, there were reports that access from X to other social networking sites, including Facebook's, Threads , and Instagram, had slowed down. The five-second delay also appeared on links to some news sites like the New York Times and Reuters.
Earlier this year, users noticed they couldn’t post or message each other and saw a notification saying they had exceeded their daily tweet limit. Direct messages also didn’t work. The company apologized for “the issue” in a post. Previous outages had also prevented users from logging in or seeing their own posts.
See also: TikTok brings text posts to “hit” the X (Twitter)
Reduced staff and efforts to save costs seem to have created various problems for users and challenges for the company itself.
Meanwhile, as Twitter struggles with its own problems, competitors are trying to gain ground. Meta launched a new Twitter-like app called Threads. Zuckerberg is even planning to launch a web version of Threads, adding more pressure on X. While Threads has lost more than half of user since its debut, it's still considered the most significant challenge yet to Musk's platform.
Source: www.theguardian.com
