Twitter agrees to restore archiving of politicians’ deleted tweets

In the past, a service on Twitter called Politwoops archived these insane tweets so that the people could know what politicians really thought.

Open State Foundation, the government transparency and accountability group that now runs the program collecting deleted tweets by elected officials and candidates, announced an agreement with Twitter on Thursday that will allow it to plug back into the company’s API just in time for 2016.

For months there has been a stubborn standoff with Politwoops, funded by the Sunlight Foundation, and other Twitter pages tracking the statements of politicians across dozens of countries, which were banned by the service last summer. It does, however, circle back to a remark that Dorsey made in October at Twitter’s Flight developer conference, in which he praised services like Politwoops for holding government accountable.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey believed the move to exclude Politwoops was a misstep in hindsight, with The Verge reporting his apology and refocused efforts for the social media hub. (The answer could be as simple as securing an exception to the developer rules.) In a statement, the organization said it would “be working behind the scenes” to get Politwoops up and running “in the coming days and weeks”. “No one user is more deserving of that ability than another”.

The agreement between Twitter and the transparency organization came after several meetings with the Sunlight Foundation and digital rights organization Access Now.

As Twitter becomes a more important platform for political discourse, it is essential that politicians and public official’s tweets remain online and accessible to the general public.

“We need to make sure we are serving all these organizations and developers in the best way, because that is what will make Twitter great”.

The resurrection of Politwoops was promptly cheered in a flurry of tweets.