It should have been a triumphant moment for Twitter owner Elon Musk to welcome Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to Twitter’s audio event on Wednesday to announce his presidential run.
Instead, the event began with over 20 minutes of technical glitches, mic buzz, and drowned out, unspoken dialogue before the live stream was abruptly cut off. A few minutes later, the livestream resumed as hundreds of thousands of listeners tried to watch, at which point DeSantis said nothing.
“It was insane, sorry,” Musk said.
The company behind Twitter Space, an audio-only livestream on the social network, has undergone a major transformation in recent months. Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last year, he has restructured Twitter by cutting more than 75% of its workforce, changing speech rules and reinstating suspended users. Bugs that make Twitter difficult to use occur, and service outages are increasing.
Wednesday’s technical glitch showed how Twitter was not running smoothly, turning what should have been a stellar affair for Mr. Musk into an embarrassing one.
The event was an opportunity for Musk, an unpredictable executive with many interests, to push multiple agendas. That included the political coming out of a billionaire who had played with right-wing accounts and politics for years on Twitter, but never embraced a presidential candidate the way DeSantis did. . And this was supposed to be a way for Musk to advance his own business interests by highlighting Twitter, which he was trying to turn around.
“He has made it clear that he intends to use the media platform to advance his political interests with unprecedented publicity,” said Jason Goldman, Twitter’s former vice president of product. Stated.
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
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