X (Twitter) made it impossible to access images and videos posted before 2014, and there was a problem with redirects from shortened links.

On X (formerly Twitter), it has become a hot topic that media files posted before 2014 cannot be viewed. Since X makes corrections and changes without prior notice, it is suspected that the files before 2014 were deleted all at once, but in this case, there seems to be a problem with redirection. I'm here.

More vandalism from

@elonmusk . Twitter has now removed all media posted before 2014. Thats - so far - almost a decade of pictures and videos from the early 2000s removed from the service.

For example, here's a search of my media tweets from before 2014. https://t.co/FU6K34oqmA

— Tom Coates (@tomcoates) August 19, 2023

It seems that the issue has attracted a lot of attention due to a post by journalist Tom Coates. Mr. Coates expresses that all media (photos and videos) posted on Twitter by 2014 can no longer be seen as 'further vandalism by Elon Mask'.

However, as pointed out in the community note, it is actually in a state where 'links to all media are not working'.

An example is a post about the 86th Academy Awards in 2014. Comedian Ellen DeGeneres, who served as the moderator, took a picture of actor Bradley Cooper, and it became a hot topic after being reposted (old retweet) more than 3 million times. I can't see the photo on your post.

If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars http://t.co/C9U5NOtGap

— Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) March 3, 2014

However, the photo itself can be viewed by accessing the correct URL. There seems to be a problem with the shortened URL 'http://t.co/C9U5NOtGap' pointing to the image in the post.

According to entrepreneur Simon Willison, all redirects from shortened URLs before January 2014 are broken.

Yeah, the media files themselves are still there but it looks like every

https://t.co/zRTvRALFVF redirect prior to January 2014 is broken

That sounds more like a dumb mistake than a cost saving measure to me

—Simon Willison (@simonw) August 19, 2023

In addition, it is unknown whether it was caused by some mistake or whether it is intentionally not redirected, and it is not clear yet whether it will be corrected in the future.

The help page for the link shortening feature doesn't even say anything special.

Twitter's link shortener (t.co) and how it works | Twitter Help
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/url-shortener