Yesterday, Elon Musk and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced DeSantis would kick off his 2024 presidential run with a conversation on Twitter Spaces.
Musk praised the event as a first for social media, a historic moment, a presidential candidate starting his campaign on the internet, with Twitter returning to its roots as the virtual town square.
Unfortunately for Musk and DeSantis, Twitter Space broke immediately.
Slated to start at 5pm CT, the hangout kicked out the moderator, tech talking head David Sacks, as listeners were met with glitched audio, silences, and a crashed Twitter app.
For over fifteen minutes, viewers were met with nothing but empty audio.
Musk at one point, said that servers were strained.
When the Spaces audio came back online, Musk apologized, noting how many people had joined and tried to welcome DeSantis.
And the audio went out again.
According to some reports, it wasn’t even clear if DeSantis entered the space.
The Space ended without anyone hearing DeSantis ever speak a word.
Given Musk’s recent struggles with digital infrastructure at Twitter, plenty weren’t surprised. At one point, “Crashed” was trending on Twitter.
DeSantis and Musk eventually got the Space running, 30 minutes after it was supposed to kick off, by having moderator Sacks host, instead of Musk.
