Twitter's heyday was probably between 2010-2012 where it became the most popular internet meeting ground. Twitter is also where the revolution in Egypt can be seen in real time and the most retweeted selfies also happen in this era. But according to a report by Social Media Today, thousands of images that were uploaded to Twitter before 2015 can no longer be displayed.
For example the Ellen Degeneres selfie that received the most retweets no longer displays the image. It simply shows a URL link that when clicked does not display the image it should. There are several theories regarding this issue of disappearance. The first theory was that with Twitter rebranding to X.com, there was confusion on the database to find uploaded images.
The second theory is that Twitter changed to HTTPS in 2014. When the X.com browser changed, images uploaded during the HTTP era were no longer accessible. The third theory claims that this is a conspiracy by Elon Musk to reduce the cost of storage operations to store photos from old devices. X has not provided an answer to this issue and until the article was written the missing picture still cannot be returned.