It was a big blow to Twitter, and a snub to Fox News and mainstream media. Elon Musk had convinced Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to launch his campaign for the 2024 presidential election via a live chat on the social network. But the firecracker was pschitt, with technical problems which disrupted this great premiere for about twenty minutes.
At 5:55 p.m. (11:55 p.m. Paris time), Elon Musk shared the Twitter space link. But at 6 p.m., impossible to connect to it. After a few minutes, everything seems to be back to normal, except Ron DeSantis, who just uploaded his first campaign video to his account, isn’t there. Elon Musk and engineers are busy. “There are a huge number of people, the servers are saturated,” Musk exclaims, while around 600,000 people are connected. And that Twitter has lost 75% of its employees since the arrival of Elon Musk, who also closed a data center in Sacramento.
After a long silence, the billionaire tries to welcome the governor of Florida, but the Twitter servers fail, with echoes and cuts. Musk stops the charges after 21 minutes and then relaunches a new space from the account of David Sacks, a Republican businessman who plays moderators for the occasion.
“A disaster”, rejoices Donald Trump
Ron DeSantis can finally get started and promises to be the candidate for the “great American comeback”. But there are three times fewer people to listen to it, with many internet users who obviously haven’t seen the new link. The discussion goes smoothly for an hour – DeSantis promises to tackle the “woke pack” and “restore sanity” – but the damage is done.
“This link works”, trolls Joe Biden, redirecting to his donations page. “Wow, the launch of DeSanctus on Twitter is a DISASTER. His campaign will be a disaster, you will see,” revels Donald Trump. Come on, in two weeks, everyone will have forgotten these failed debuts.