Although he may be the wealthiest person in the world, Elon Musk’s recent interview with Donald Trump highlighted that he still struggles with technical issues on X. The conversation, intended to showcase the platform’s capabilities, was delayed by 40 minutes due to technical problems. This isn’t the first high-profile glitch X has experienced; a similar issue occurred in May 2023 when Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s bid announcement was marred by technical difficulties.
Despite Musk’s efforts to prepare for his interview with Trump by performing “system scaling tests” on X’s audio chat feature, he was unable to resolve the tech issues. At one point, about 1.3 million people were listening, and the word “crashed” quickly trended on X as users discussed the failure. Some critics used this as an opportunity to target Musk, while others claimed the high level of interest caused the crash.
Musk attributed the problem to a cyber attack, specifically a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which aims to overwhelm a website and make it unusable. However, The Verge reported that its sources at X did not confirm any such attack. Experts are divided: Matthew Prince from Cloudflare noted that while it could be a DDoS attack, Cloudflare does not secure X’s Spaces system and therefore cannot confirm it. On the other hand, Alp Toker from Netblocks suggested that Musk’s explanation did not align well with a DDoS attack scenario.
Cisco Thousand Eyes found no evidence of a typical DDoS attack and suggested that the issue might be linked to X’s reduced workforce. Jake Moore from ESET pointed out that the platform has struggled with high user volumes before and noted that Musk’s significant staff reductions could have exacerbated the problem. Rashik Parmar from BCS echoed this, stating that losing a substantial portion of engineers likely weakened the platform’s ability to defend against cyber threats.
Ultimately, whether due to an external attack or internal issues, the incident revealed that X’s technical challenges persist, undermining its image as an “everything app” in development.
