Elon Musk’s DDOS Attack Claim for Trump Livestream Failure Called ‘Baloney’ by Staff

Elon Musk attributed the failure of his scheduled X Spaces livestream interview with Donald Trump to a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, but some members of his staff are skeptical of this explanation, according to a report by The Verge.

An unnamed staff member from the company told The Verge there was a “‘99 percent’ chance Elon was lying about an attack.” Another source confirmed that the technical malfunction was not caused by a DDOS attack, as Musk suggested. Platform users also pointed out that the rest of the social media service seemed to function normally while the live stream crashed, casting further doubt on Musk’s explanation.

The interview, which was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., left users on X unable to access the livestream when it was supposed to start. The talk eventually began more than 40 minutes late and was streamed to a smaller audience than initially anticipated.

My use of the word conversation is deliberate.

This is so that people understand how @realDonaldTrump talks when it’s a conversation, rather than an interview.

Nobody is quite themselves in an interview, so it’s hard to understand what they’re really like. https://t.co/H6G0RuwIM4

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2024

In a post following the incident, Musk claimed to have tested the X Spaces stream with “8 million concurrent listeners” earlier that Monday, prior to the crash. However, the malfunction quickly drew comparisons to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ X announcement of his presidential bid, which also experienced a crash due to server overload, according to The Verge.

The failure of the Trump interview to launch as planned has raised questions about the reliability of X Spaces, particularly for high-profile events. While Musk’s claim of a DDOS attack might offer a convenient explanation, the skepticism from his own staff suggests that the platform’s technical infrastructure may not be as robust as advertised.