There is huge value in tracking deleted public tweets, which offered an intimate perspective on politicians and how they communicate with their constituents. But of course, those tweets never truly disappear after they’ve been published.
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Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has shut off access to 30 more dedicated accounts to monitor and archive the deleted tweets of politicians, diplomats and embassies around the world.
By this morning, the story had blown up online, making the front page of Reddit.
The sites – collectively known as Politwoops – were overseen by the Open State Foundation (OSF), which reported that Twitter suspended their API access on Friday, August 21st.
“Imagine how nerve-racking-terrifying, even-tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?” No one user is more deserving of that ability than another. The British organization’s accounts logged the deleted tweets of persons in power in over 30 countries around the world.
But the foundation’s director, Arjan El Fassed, said: “What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record”.
Two social media management platforms that track politicians’ deleted tweets in an effort to maintain transparency have been cut off from accessing Twitter.
The group said it will continue to explore ways to maintain a service to show changes in public tweets by elected politicians. It was first developed by Dutch non-profit the Open State Foundation in 2010, and operated in 30 other jurisdictions, including Britain and the European Parliament. “This is not about typos but it is a unique insight on how messages from elected politicians can change without notice”.
The move wasn’t without precedent – Twitter had blocked access to the US version of Politwoops in May.
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Sunlight Foundation president, Christopher Gates, was unhappy at Twitter’s decision to begin banning the service and stated earlier this year that a “member of Congress does not and should not have the same expectation of privacy as a private citizen”. Not for the first time, Twitter has entered the political arena, indicating that it views the deletion decisions of elected politicians as more important than the right of the electorate to see tweets that have been self-censored.
