Musk's 'historic' Twitter event with DeSantis plagued with glitches, delays

Elon Musk wants to turn Twitter into a “digital town square,” but his much-publicized Twitter Spaces kickoff event, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing his run for president, started off with technical glitches and a near half-hour delay Tuesday.

The billionaire Twitter owner said the problems were due to “straining” servers because so many people were trying to listen to the audio-only event.

“There’s so many people,” said host David Sacks amid the disruptions. “We’ve got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign.”

Full Twitter space video with Elon Musk, David Sacks, and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. pic.twitter.com/np0q71p4RX

— John (@not_goodname) May 25, 2023

Musk a day earlier dubbed the event a historic first for Twitter, saying it would be “the first time something like this is happening on social media.” The event was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. ET but nearly 30 minutes passed with users getting kicked off, hearing microphone feedback and enduring other technical problems before it finally began.

At one point, over 300,000 Twitter users were listed as listening to the event, but the number dropped closer to 100,000 as people got kicked off because of the technical issues.