DeSantis quit as Twitter engineering boss after initial hiccups

An engineering chief at Twitter says he is leaving the company due to a technical glitch, the day after Ron DeSantis launched his US presidential campaign on stage.

Food Dabri tweeted: “After almost four years on Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday.”

Mr DeSantis’ entry into the race for the White House was marred by problems after the Twitter livestream went down.

More than 80% of the workforce has been cut since Mr Musk bought the company.

Mr Dabri, who was head of engineering for Twitter’s growth organization, said in a tweet that he had “experienced two distinct periods” at the company, before and after it was acquired by the multi-billionaire company last year.

In another postMr Dabri said Twitter’s transition to “2.0” was “big and fast”.

He added: “To say it was challenging in the beginning would be an understatement.”

Mr Dabiri did not say why he decided to leave Twitter and whether it was related to issues with the DeSantis incident on the platform.

He did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment. When approached by the BBC, Twitter did not provide a statement on Mr Dabri’s departure.

However, Mr Dabri said: “Working with @elonmusk was very educational and it was enlightening to see how his principles and vision are shaping the future of this company.”

By the time Twitter talk began in earnest on Wednesday evening, hundreds of thousands of Twitter users had left the site.

The Florida governor is seen as the main challenger to former President Donald Trump for his party’s nomination in the 2024 general election.

Mr Musk, who also runs carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, bought Twitter in October for $44bn (£35.4bn).

Speaking to the BBC last month, he said it would not be easy to cut the company from less than 8,000 employees to 1,500 at the time he bought it.

Since Mr Musk took the reins at Twitter, he has laid off thousands of employees, including engineers responsible for the site’s operations and technical fixes.

Mr DeSantis’ team quickly fixed the technical glitches, writing on Twitter that the announcement had broken the “internet with great excitement” and posting a link to the campaign website.

said his press secretary Brian Griffin Online event It raised $1 million in an hour.

At one point, the Twitter event drew more than 600,000 visitors, according to figures from the Reuters news agency, but by the end there were fewer than 300,000.

As the livestream began, Mr DeSantis steered the conversation back to his conservative credentials and his handling of the Covid-19 crisis in his state – an anti-lockdown approach praised by many Republicans.