Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s interview with X owner Elon Musk was knocked offline crashed on Monday evening after it came under a “massive DDOS attack”.
The highly anticipated interview had hundreds of thousands of people listening live when it crashed right after it launched around 8 p.m. EST.
“There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏,” Musk posted on the site. “Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”
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 said that earlier in the day his team “tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners”.
He added that X would proceed with a smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 p.m. EST “and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter.”
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
Musk said that the distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack was proof of how much opposition there was to letting people hear what Trump has to say.
The X Space did eventually get underway, and quickly became the largest X-Space event of all time with well over one million users tuning in.
.@realDonaldTrump‘s space with @elonmusk has over 1.2 million listeners. This is the biggest space yet in X’s history.#PCTechUpdates pic.twitter.com/UHO696wE25
— PC Tech Magazine (@pctechmagazine) August 13, 2024