Overloaded Twitter servers, mass layoffs at tech company all blamed for DeSantis’ botched loss

The Twitter Spaces intended to host the 2024 presidential campaign announcement for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis crashed and was delayed by nearly half an hour as thousands were confused by the technical glitch.

It led to instant ridicule on social media and confusion over whether the event had started.

Visitors wondered what was going on as Twitter engineers scrambled to fix the problem and get the announcement underway.

Musk blamed his followers, others blamed the services, while some blamed the massive loss of Twitter staff since Musk took control of the social media giant.

In the end, thousands of people were left in the dark – and in silence – waiting for the groundbreaking announcement.

The spaces were initially hosted from Elon Musk’s account, which has some 140 million followers, but eventually had to be relaunched from David Sacks’ account, which has less than 1 million followers.

More than half a million Twitter users took part in Wednesday night’s Spaces event, which was delayed by 26 minutes and had several false starts.

When the product started working correctly, only about 250,000 users were left to listen.

Audio clips from the livestream event allowed users to hear platform host and owner Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks try to explain the crash.

“We’ve got so many people here that we’re kind of melting down the servers,” Sacks said at one point.

“Something like this has never happened before,” Musk said moments later.

The spaces were initially hosted from Elon Musk’s account, which has 140 million followers, but eventually had to be relaunched with Sacks’ account, which has less than 1 million followers.

“I think it crashed because when you multiply half a million people in a room with an account that has over 100 million followers, which is Elon’s account, I think that just creates a level of scalability that was unprecedented,” said Sacks.

“I think you broke the internet,” Sacks told DeSantis when the event relaunched. “You know you’re breaking new ground when there are bugs and scaling issues,” he continued, trying to put a positive spin on the debacle.

After taking ownership of Twitter late last year, Musk reduced the company’s server capacity in an effort to cut costs

DeSantis officially entered the 2024 Republican presidential primary on Wednesday night with a Twitter Spaces thread malfunctioning for about half an hour before the announcement could be made official

Trump now faces DeSantis for the 2024 Republican nomination as the two are the frontrunners to run against Joe Biden

Since Musk took control of the company late last year, Twitter has faced a number of technical issues and outages. The problems may be due in part to Musk’s decision to lay off large numbers of technical and other personnel.

Musk also cut Twitter’s server capacity in an effort to cut costs at the company he said was bleeding money.

In recent months, Twitter has experienced multiple service outages that have impacted its user base, including the ability to access the site and view images.

Some users have also reported issues with the app’s two-factor authentication tool. Others have complained that old tweets keep popping up on their timelines.

According to a CNN Report, the Twitter Spaces product was described as a “prototype” and “janky” by a former Twitter employee.

“It’s a beta test that never ended,” says the former employee.

POLITICS noted that previous Twitter Spaces events hosted by Musk with smaller audiences had also been halted due to technical glitches.

Since the acquisition, Musk has reduced Twitter’s server capacity in an effort to cut costs at the company he said was bleeding money.

Despite the problems at the start, the announcement and ensuing discussion lasted nearly an hour, after which Sacks again acknowledged the rocky start, saying “It’s not how you started, it’s how you finish and we finished strong.”

By then, memes and rivals had already weighed in on the delays. A spokesman for former President Donald Trump, who is also running for the Republican nomination, described it as “Glitchy. Technical issues. Awkward silences. A complete failure to start. And that’s just the nominee!”

President Joe Biden said on his Twitter account, “This link works,” as he used it to raise money for his 2024 campaign.

Speaking to Fox News after the Twitter trouble, DeSantis tried to put a positive spin on the announcement that went wrong.