Ellen DeGeneres‘ selfie at the 2014 Oscar Awards – dubbed as the most famous selfie of all time – was temporarily deleted from X (fka Twitter) last weekend.
Since Elon Musk took over the reigns of Twitter, now known as X, the social media platform has experienced multiple changes and outages, from users reporting that they weren’t able to tweet unless a post was scheduled, and the infamous implementation of post limits.
One of the biggest issues the platform has faced recently saw old images from 2014 and earlier wiped from the platform, instead showing up as a link, as pointed out by The Verge. This includes Ellen DeGeneres’ viral 2014 selfie, which saw her snap a picture with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Lupita Nyong’o and more while at that year’s Oscars.
One of the first users to point out this issue was Tom Coates, who wrote that he was unable to see images from 2014 on Saturday afternoon. He stated: “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.”
If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) March 3, 2014
Notably, DeGeneres’ selfie and other photos from 2014 and prior have been restored onto X/Twitter, though neither Elon Musk nor X CEO Linda Yaccarino have commented on the glitch.
DeGeneres’ original post in 2014 quickly went on to become the most reposted tweet of all time, with over 1million shares in the span of a few days. It now has over 2.8million reshares, 2million likes and counting.
Last week (August 18), Elon Musk revealed that he plans to remove the ‘block’ function on X/Twitter as the latest in a raft of changes. “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” the tech mogul posted on X yesterday on August 18. He added that he believes the function “makes no sense”.
Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg has seemingly called off a much-hyped cage fight with Musk because the latter “won’t confirm a date” and isn’t “serious” about the event. Last month, Musk challenged Zuckerberg, who has trained in jiu-jitsu, to a wrestling cage fight. “I’m up for a cage match if he is,” said Musk on Twitter, with Zuckerberg responding via Instagram Stories to say: “Send me location.” Musk then responded by tweeting a proposed location for the fight: “Vegas Octagon.”
Musk also said that the fight would be live-streamed on Twitter (now known as X) and teased an “epic location” to host it, but Zuckerburg shared that he wasn’t “holding [his] breath” for it to go ahead.