Twitter users report slew of new bugs: Disappearing tweets, photo tags removed, link previews gone

Another week, another new plague of Twitter bugs and glitches.

Over the past few days, Twitter users have reported a wide variety of issues that greatly affect the platform’s functionality. Here are the most pressing ones.

Disappearing tweets

Perhaps the most concerning of the new bugs(Opens in a new tab) involves users’ tweets randomly(Opens in a new tab) showing up as deleted(Opens in a new tab). 

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According to users who have experienced the issue, certain posts are showing up as “unavailable” or are even showing the “This tweet has been deleted” message, despite the users never having deleted them. These are not messages typically shown on tweets intentionally removed by Twitter moderators due to real or supposed rule violations.

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This bug seems to just be arbitrarily deleting certain users’ tweets. Or, at least, making it look(Opens in a new tab) like the tweet has been deleted.

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Some users have reported that tweets affected by this bug are successfully showing up when the users’ locations change, or seem to change. Twitter user @ydn1m(Opens in a new tab) posted a video showing that when they used a VPN to make it seem like their usually U.S.-based account was connecting from Seoul, South Korea, one of the tweets that was previously showing up as deleted had started to reappear on the platform. 

As Platformer previously reported(Opens in a new tab) last month, “Twitter has seen increased latency — the time between taking an action like refreshing the timeline and seeing new tweets populate in your feed” since it shut down one of its data centers as part of owner Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiatives. Some users have reported seeing their engagement numbers – such as likes and retweets – constantly change in a matter of seconds due to this delay. It appears that tweets disappearing depending on a users’ region could possibly be related to such issues.

In Mashable’s own tests, quote tweet count details have been breaking too. Normally, when clicking on quote tweet counts we expect to see a list of tweets that quoted the tweet in question. Presently, even when the number of quote tweets indicated on a tweet is in the hundreds or thousands, the quote tweet page will often just appear empty as if no one had quoted the tweet.

Broken integrations with Slack, iMessage, and WhatsApp

Users have also been experiencing(Opens in a new tab) broken Twitter integrations with third-party platforms.

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Perhaps the most notable platform facing issues with Twitter is the popular chat app, Slack. And, according to Slack, the company is unsure if its integration was purposefully shut off by Twitter.

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“We’re aware that the Twitter integration is no longer publishing tweets to channels, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience,” Slack wrote(Opens in a new tab) on Twitter. “We don’t have much information from the Twitter team about whether or not they’ll restore that functionality unfortunately.”

Twitter users have also shared another(Opens in a new tab) major broken(Opens in a new tab) integration: Twitter previews have no longer been showing up in iMessage or in WhatsApp.

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Normally, when a tweet is shared in iMessage or WhatsApp, two of the most popular messaging apps in the world, a preview of the tweet would show up directly in the message. Over the past week or so, that has not been the case. Instead, when a tweet is posted in iMessage or WhatsApp now, a non-descriptive link shows up that just says “Twitter(Opens in a new tab).”

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Also, Mashable’s Twitter account was disconnected this morning from the social media management service True Anthem.

Missing photo tags

Twitter first rolled out photo tagging back in 2014(Opens in a new tab). The feature allowed users to tag other users’ @ handles from within the photo. When the user posted the tweet, the tagged handles would appear beneath the photo. The photo-tagged tweet would then appear in the tagged users’ mentions, while freeing up space in the tweet for the original tweeter as photo tags did not count towards a tweet’s character count.

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Numerous Twitter users(Opens in a new tab) are now saying(Opens in a new tab) that the photo tagging feature is seemingly gone(Opens in a new tab).

To be clear, the ability to tag users in a photo is still there when drafting a tweet. So the removal doesn’t appear to be intentional.

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Non-advertisers ineligible to advertise

As first reported by social media consultant Matt Navarra(Opens in a new tab), Twitter has been sending out emails to some users over the past day, letting them know that their “account is ineligible to participate in Twitter Ads.”

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One small problem: These users don’t appear to have done anything to warrant the email. In fact, users that have received this email have reported that they never even signed up to run Twitter ads in the first place. One user even shared(Opens in a new tab) that this was their second time receiving this unsolicited email.

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Since Elon Musk acquired the company last October, Twitter has been experiencing numerous bugs and issues as well as more-frequent downtime. The company has a much smaller workforce in recent months, following multiple rounds of layoffs as Musk looks to cut costs. Twitter’s ad revenue, which previously accounted for the bulk of its earnings, have taken a significant hit since Musk’s takeover. In turn, many of these bugs, glitches and a plethora of other issues have been left to fester on the platform.

Mashable reached out to Twitter for comment on any of these issues. The company’s press email auto-responded with a poop emoji.