Elon Musk’s Frustration: Twitter Failures in DeSantis’ Candidacy

Elon Musk angered by Twitter failures in Ron DeSantis’ candidacy launch

The governor’s team claimed the announcement of his presidential run “broke the internet,” but the tech mogul was reportedly exasperated with his own social network over the tech gaffe during the Space event

Last Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis formally announced his run as a pre-candidate for the U.S. presidency in 2024 via a live Space event on Twitter. The night was led by technology tycoon and entrepreneur Elonk Musk, who, according to some media reports, was not happy with the performance of his own platform and was angered by the failures during the Republican’s announcement.

DeSantis’ live broadcast managed to summon more than 600,000 listeners. All of them witnessed the constant technical problems during the conversation. Users complained that the application on their cell phones crashed several times while the Floridian was giving his speech. They also evidenced that there was a delay of more than 20 minutes in the event. It later transpired that this delay was also a consequence of technical failures.

The governor’s team assured that the inconveniences were the result of the great response that users gave to DeSantis, who boasted of having “broken the Internet”. However, this situation was not so pleasant for Musk and he showed his anger for the constant interruptions in Space, even in the exclusive application format that he and his employees use, according to Platformer. This information was confirmed to Insider by a source close to the tycoon, who said that he had indeed ended up upset by the performance of his social network.

Meanwhile, three Twitter employees told The New York Times that the necessary measures were not taken to carry out the event, despite the fact that the staff had shown concern about the large number of users that would be connected. Some predicted that the system would not be able to handle all the traffic, but no strategy was implemented to prevent failures. In this regard, a former employee of Musk’s company revealed to CNN that Twitter Spaces is a great prototype, but is not yet a finalized product. “It’s a beta test that never ended,” he assured.

Memes on social networks

Musk’s anger represented a spur to creativity for others. Hours after the Florida governor’s announcement ended, users made a trend on Twitter in which they evidenced, through memes, the technical problems in his Space and made fun of some of the Republican’s proposals. The posts were accompanied by the hashtag “DeSaster” (disaster).

Ron DeSantis announced his campaign for the U.S. presidency and was dubbed a “DeSaster” on social media. – Twitter

There were those who pointed out that the failures had been caused by Mickey Mouse, symbol of the entertainment giant Disney, with which DeSantis has a bitter battle, increasingly aggressive. Along those lines, one user shared a photo of Mickey with the message, “Tell Ron, I want him to know: it was me.” Others created images showing the Floridian running away from the famous character.

The dispute between Disney and DeSantis began when DeSantis enacted a law that prohibits teachers from addressing sexual orientation and gender identity issues in the classroom. Disney officials publicly rejected this initiative and DeSantis began the attacks against him. This story also inspired a meme. Users edited the governor’s photographs to add symbols and colors totally opposite to what his image represents.