The critics railed at the technical difficulties that plagued X’s owner Elon Musk’s highly anticipated interview with former president Trump.
X users rushed into Trump’s “Space,” where he was to talk with the tech billionaire about the 2024 race. The “Space” crashed immediately due to an influx of users.
Musk then took to X and told users there appeared to be a massive DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attack on X. We are working to shut it down. We will do the best we can to keep it running but with a reduced number of listeners.
There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down.
Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Musk responded “Yeah” to X users who suggested that Democrats may have been involved in the technical meltdown.
Its Dems fighting to ‘save’ Democracy from two massive disrupters!
— mark pincus (@markpinc) August 13, 2024
Musk posted that X had been tested with 8,000,000 simultaneous listeners in the morning.
Musk said, “We’ll start with fewer listeners concurrently at 8:30 ET. We will post the unedited audio shortly after.”
We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today https://t.co/ymqGBFEJX0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter https://t.co/oxF8PsNHnZ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
After approximately 40 minutes, the interview began. At least one million X users participated in the relaunched discussion.
Critics have reacted to the viral controversy.
Bill Ackman, a billionaire investor, told Trump: “Please let Elon that we cannot join.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2024
Trump was furious at the NABJ for keeping him waiting 30 minutes due to their technical problems. Now, he is kept waiting once again and no matter what Trump says, the media will focus on this technical meltdown. “He won’t be pleased,” Breaking Points host Saagar Enjeti wrote.
Trump was fuming at the NABJ when their technical difficulties kept him waiting for 30 minutes
Now he’s kept waiting again, and ofc a lot of the coverage is going to focus on the technical meltdown no matter what he says. He won’t be happy
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) August 13, 2024
Jonathan Swan, a reporter for the New York Times, took a shot at Musk’s promise by saying “Entertainment Guaranteed!” “I’ll have functionality guaranteed!”
I’ll take functionality guaranteed! https://t.co/sPzUcEjc2L
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) August 13, 2024
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, posted a picture of Trump staring at his phone with the caption “BREAKING THE INTERNET!”
BREAKING THE INTERNET! @realDonaldTrump 🤝 @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/26YgA5vwJO
— Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) August 13, 2024
Last year, the same thing happened during the launch of the Republican Florida Governor’s presidential campaign. Ron DeSantis also had an interview with Musk set up on his platform, then Twitter, but experienced technical problems due to the high “Spaces’ traffic.
The interview was to be Trump’s return to the platform after the previous owner banned him from the platform in 2021 following the January 6 Riot. Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account shortly after Musk purchased Twitter and changed its name to X.
