Twitter engineering chief quits after DeSantis campaign glitch

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
26 May 15:22

The head of Twitter's engineering department leaves the company after various glitches hit DeSantis' bid for the White House on Wednesday.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), February 24, 2022, in Orlando, Florida (AP)

A day after Ron DeSantis' US presidential campaign launched on Twitter with technical difficulties, the company's head of engineering announced that he is departing.

"After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday," Foad Dabiri, the head of the engineering department at Twitter said.

This comes after DeSantis' first publicity bid after the announcement that he was running for the presidency was hit by problems as a Twitter live stream was hit by numerous glitches.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced his 2024 bid for the US presidency on Wednesday. News earlier in the day indicated that DeSantis had officially filed the relevant paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

DeSantis is the latest challenger to former US President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination. The announcement came on Twitter, with a vow from the Florida governor that he would be running to "lead our Great American Comeback."

Dabiri didn't say why he left Twitter or whether it had anything to do with the issues surrounding the DeSantis event there.

The governor was expected to announce a Twitter Space broadcast with site owner Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks; however, several technical glitches halted the plan from taking place on time as servers appeared to be overwhelmed with more than 600,000 people tuning in.

He was able to voice his bid about 20 minutes after the event was set to start.

Thousands of Twitter users had deserted by the time the Wednesday night Twitter space really got going.

According to statistics from the Reuters news agency, the Twitter event attracted more than 600,000 listeners at one point, but by the time it was over, there were fewer than 300,000.

As soon as the broadcast started, DeSantis underlined his conservative views and praised how he handled the COVID-19 situation in his state, an anti-lockdown strategy that many Republicans praised.

The Florida Governor was able to run for president only because of a legal change made less than a month ago allowing him to do so.

DeSantis signed the election overhaul bill into law on April 28, which requires candidates to resign from their other offices upon announcing a campaign for a different office, but contains specific caveats for presidential and vice-presidential candidates.