Elon Musk’s highly anticipated interview with former President Donald Trump on the X’s Spaces platform was plagued by technical glitches, preventing many users from joining the audio conversation. Musk attributed the issues to a massive denial-of-service attack (DDOS), a federal criminal act that overwhelms a site with data to knock it offline. While the outage tracker Downdetector reported a spike in reports of X being inaccessible before the interview, it was unclear if this was due to a malicious attack or simply an overwhelming number of people trying to listen in.
Despite the technical difficulties, Musk finally kicked off the interview at 8:42 p.m., with approximately 1.3 million people listening in by 9:40 p.m. Trump praised Musk for breaking records with the sheer number of listeners attempting to join the conversation. Musk had been promoting the event as a conversation rather than an interview, noting that X had tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier in the day. However, these technical issues highlight ongoing challenges with X since Musk took over the company, leading to the departure of many staff members responsible for the site’s operation.
This isn’t the first time X has faced technical problems during a high-profile event. Trump previously mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when his primary campaign launched with an interview on X that also experienced glitches. Musk attributed the issues to servers being strained due to the high volume of listeners. The DeSantis event saw users getting kicked off, hearing microphone feedback, and experiencing other technical difficulties, with the number of listeners peaking at around 420,000. Ultimately, DeSantis dropped out of the race after a disappointing finish in Iowa’s caucuses.
Trump, who has been active on his own social media platform, Truth Social, returned to X on Monday morning to post for the first time since being banned in 2021. His posts promoted the interview with Musk and featured campaign ads. This event marks a significant milestone for both X and Truth Social as they navigate the challenges of hosting high-profile interviews and engaging with a large user base. Despite the technical glitches, the interview with Trump provided a unique opportunity for listeners to hear from both Musk and the former President, sparking conversations and reactions across social media platforms.
