Ron DeSantis’ attempt to launch his 2024 presidential campaign via Twitter Spaces did not go as planned as the platform faced a plethora of technological issues, prompting a flood of memes and mockery.
The social media platform was filled with jokes about Mr DeSantis and Twitter owner Elon Musk, who co-hosted the Spaces meeting, on Wednesday evening.
From the start, the platform faced glitches that caused the audio to cut out at random moments and the Twitter mobile app to crash periodically.
The Spaces meeting, which was supposed to start at 6pm, ended up kicking off around 20 minutes later when Mr Musk and other Twitter employees figured out how to keep it from crashing.
But a lack of communication from Mr Musk, Mr DeSantis and David Sacks, the moderator of the Spaces conversation, left many Twitter users confused for the 20 minutes of tech issues.
While people were searching for the correct link to the Spaces meeting, several presidential candidates, including President Joe Biden seized an opportunity.
“This link works,” Mr Biden tweeted with a link to donate to his presidential campaign.
Former governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson wrote, “Just like my policies, this link works” with a link to donate to his campaign too.
According to Mr Sacks, the Spaces kept crashing because servers were overloaded with the number of people trying to listen.
“We got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign,” Mr Sacks said during the meeting.
Some mocked Mr Musk for failing to consider the high volume of listeners given that the Spaces meeting was highly publicised and Mr DeSantis was expected to announce his campaign.
When the Twitter Spaces event did begin working, it had some microphone glitches and awkward silences as the speakers attempted to figure out how to work the platform.
Donald Trump, Mr DeSantis’ largest rival in the race for the Republican nomination, joked about the tech issues on his platform Truth Social.
Mr Trump shared a meme of a rocket falling and exploding, calling it “Ron! 2024”
“Is the DeSantis launch FATAL? Yes!,” Mr Trump wrote
He added, “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”
Many agreed that the launch via Twitter Spaces was semi-disastrous for Mr DeSantis and a rough start to his campaign, calling it a “failure to launch”.
On Twitter, Mr Musk disagreed with headlines that indicated the Twitter Spaces launch went poorly, claiming the attention it garnered reflects positively on Twitter.
”I call it ‘massive attention’ Top story on Earth today,” Mr Musk wrote.
