Ron DeSantis brought Elon Musk’s Twitter to its breaking point

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Ron DeSantis, the The Republican governor of Florida was surely hoping to trend on Twitter after announcing his run for president in an audio stream on the platform today. He probably didn’t want the main hashtag to be #DeSaster.

Just minutes after DeSantis joined platform owner Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces, and before the politician could even speak, Musk was heard saying, “The servers are trying a little hard.” The broadcast then ended abruptly, apparently overwhelmed by some 667,000 listeners, a paltry number compared to broadcasts on other platforms routinely seen by millions.

DeSantis’ appearance was a bid for a novel presidential campaign tactic and a platform not known for its mass appeal to American voters. He ended up pushing Twitter to the breaking point both technically and philosophically.

The company, which has a fifth of the workforce it had when Musk acquired Twitter last year, it finally restarted streaming audio almost 30 minutes after the scheduled start time. But the event went on to demonstrate the ideological blinders on Musk’s social media project, and its tendency to isolate powerful people, especially those with right-wing views, from the “freedom of expressionThe CEO has claimed to lead.

The #DeSaster does not bode well for Musk ambitions to expand and stabilize the platform, which it has said will one day attract 1 billion users a month. The businessman has repeatedly spoken of turning Twitter into a “all application” similar to multifunctional Chinese WeChat app. Twitter is set to host a new show from right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson by following his ouster from Fox Newswhere regularly drawing more than 3 million viewers.

Today’s glitches showed that Twitter doesn’t seem ready to host such crowds. It also doesn’t show much potential as a place to reach a wide swath of American voters. Only 20 percent of American adults report using Twitter, according to a recent Pew Research survey, while 81 percent say they use YouTube and 69 percent Facebook. And while Musk has talked about turning Twitter into a global “digital square,” he has overseen a weakening of content moderation and invited back accounts banned for offensive content, including rapper Yeformerly Kanye West, and former president donald trump.

DeSantis’ broadcast further undermined Musk’s claims to make Twitter a place for authentic exchanges of diverse views. The platform “isn’t just canned speeches and teleprompters,” he boasted, just minutes after DeSantis finished his canned speech, that he echoed lines from his campaign video.

Musk also reiterated his desire for Twitter to be a place where people with different political views can mingle. “Maybe some minds will change one way or another,” he said. But when the digital forum was opened to questions, they came from a who’s who of Muskian’s right-wing thought leadership and allies, including businessman-turned-podcaster David Sacks, who co-hosted the event.

The guests also included Skeptical of covid lockdown and Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya; libertarian-leaning Republican Congressman Thomas Massie; conservative talk show host Steve Deace; conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who campaigns against discussions of race and sexuality in public schools; and former National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch.