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Elon Musk’s takeover and rebranding of Twitter has been nothing short of dramatic. Let’s tally up the damage report as it stands.
So far, X’s overlord has fired half of the company’s original workforce, limited the number of tweets people can view on a given day, and transitioned the verification program to an $8 per month subscription package. During his tenure, he’s changed X’s logo an ‘I’ve lost count’ number of times, most recently altering the icon to look edgier with dark, brooding white stains. Recently, he even decided to disable the blocking feature, making it impossible for users to remove abusive posts from their timelines. Am I missing anything?
It feels like Elon Musk is an inexperienced captain unintentionally steering his ship into icebergs. The only thing keeping the platform afloat is the very thing Musk is doing his very best to alienate—that being Twitter’s longstanding, dedicated user base.
Now for the next nail in X’s proverbial coffin. A new glitch has wiped out almost every picture and link retweeted before December 2014. Tom Coates reported the incident in an informative Tweet. In short, nearly a decade of images have been unceremoniously wiped from the service.
Whether this is an intentional move or a glitch is currently unclear. Musk is yet to comment on the situation. Fortunately, the change doesn’t affect videos, likely because Twitter only added built-in video functionality in 2016.
Curiously, some images have been restored manually, reinforcing the idea that this may be a glitch instead of an impulsive decision made by Twitter’s mercurial owner. The iconic Oscar selfie, for example, was initially broken but now works as intended.
It’s too early to tell whether Musk intends to reverse the change. But, if his current string of disastrous decisions is anything to go by, we wouldn’t hold out too much hope.
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