Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was set to announce his run for president on a Twitter Space with Elon Musk today, but Twitter itself had other ideas.
The service, which allows livestreamed group voice chats, cut out quickly after going live at 3PM PT. The audio glitched in and out, at times only played the reverb noise along with some distorted speech. As of 3:15 there were 580,000 listeners in the Twitter space, which was set to be hosted by venture capitalist and Musk ally David Sacks.
Twitter has been beset by technical issues since Musk took over last last year, gutting its staff and slashing the company’s expenses. By 3:20PM PT, TechCrunch observed that the live audio session was only available as a recording.
Update: By 3:30PM PT, an alternative Twitter Space with a live Ron DeSantis was up and running, though it only attracted a fraction of the initial listener base that tuned in to the original announcement.
In the new Twitter Space, DeSantis secured his big campaign kick off moment, albeit to a reduced audience. “I am running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback,” DeSantis said.
