Bug: Profile images 404 due to Twitter/X avatar URL suffix/hash changes

[BankkRoll]

Profile images 404 due to Twitter/X avatar URL suffix/hash changes

Note: This only affects past tweets. Tweets posted after an avatar update will use the new image and render correctly. Old tweets using the old profile_image_url will never automatically update.

Description
When embedding tweets, profile images can return a 404 because the profile_image_url from Twitter’s syndication API points to a stale asset.

react-tweet currently renders the URL directly from the syndication response, so once the old asset is purged, the embed shows a broken avatar.

Example

// Old URL Being Returned (404s)
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxx_normal.jpg

// New URL **NOT** Being Returned  (works)
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxx_400x400.jpg

Steps to Reproduce

1. Pick a personal / non-gold-check account and embed one of its tweets using react-tweet.
2. Confirm the profile image renders correctly.
3. Upgrade the account to a verified business / gold-check account.
4. After the gold check is applied, reload the embed.
5. Observe that the old profile_image_url now returns a 404 and the avatar is broken.

Expected Behavior

• Avatars should always render, even if Twitter rotates the asset hash or updates the profile image.
• The component should ensure the latest avatar is displayed for past tweets, not just the version at the time of posting.

Actual Behavior

• Avatar requests fail with 404 for old suffix/hash.
• The tweet embed shows a broken profile image.
• Using URL suffix manipulations would only load the avatar that existed when the tweet was posted, not the latest profile image.

Current Workaround / Fallback

Currently, we bypass this issue by overriding the default avatar component in react-tweet.
Our custom component (SafeProfileImage) renders the original profile image URL, and if it 404s, it falls back to a known working image for the account.

Limitations:

• Without a dynamic latest-avatar fetch, past tweets still risk pointing to stale images if the account updates its avatar again.
• Manual updates to the fallback image are currently required to ensure the latest avatar is displayed.

[BankkRoll]

It seems the issue is primarily related to the URL suffix. Changing _normal to _400x400 allows the avatar image to load, but it only fetches the version that existed at the time the tweet was posted.

This means:

• Old tweets will never automatically get the updated profile image.
• Changing _normal to _400x400 prevents 404s.