Twitter crashed during Trump's social media summit
Somebody's upset they didn't get an invitation to President Trump's social media summit.
Okay, so that's probably not why Twitter suffered an apparent global outage on Thursday afternoon. But the blackout did oddly coincide with a gathering of right-wing internet personalities at the White House dubbed its "social media summit" that conspicuously lacked some of the biggest names in the social business.
The White House announced the Thursday event last month, but as it drew closer, major sites including Facebook and Twitter started going public with the fact that they hadn't been invited. Still, Trump touted the "very important" event's guest list on Thursday morning, revealing that QAnon followers, far-right memers, and several deception-spreading trolls would be in attendance. In true Trump fashion, he also proclaimed how the event's guests would discuss "the tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination, and suppression practiced by certain companies" on — where else? — Twitter.
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The outage was ongoing as of 3:30 p.m. ET: the time Trump was slated to speak at the summit.
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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.