Twitter shuts down accounts monitoring politicians’ deleted tweets

Twitter can’t stop people from watching politician’s accounts in real time-the company can only block access to its application program interface, which was allowing Politwoops accounts to automate the process of monitoring for deleted tweets.

We strongly support Sunlight’s mission of increasing transparency in politics and using civic tech and open data to hold government accountable to constituents, but preserving deleted Tweets violates our developer agreement.

The Open State Foundation says that was informed by the social media firm said that its decision to pull the plug followed a “thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors’ and that it doesn’t distinguish between users”. “No one user is more deserving of that ability than another”, the statement from Twitter read.

Twitter has severed API access to more sites that archive deleted tweets from politicians.

Twitter said that it banned the services because everyone “has a right to express themselves without fear that their tweets are to become permanent record”.

Chris Gates, president of the Sunlight Foundation, which ran the American Politwoops account, said that, as public figures, “elected officials and candidates… don’t have the same expectation of privacy as a private individual”.

“This is not about typos but it is a unique insight on how messages from elected politicians can change without notice”, El Fassed added.

Politwoops and Diplotwoops were rendered inoperable by the social network after access to Twitter’s APIs [application programming interfaces] was revoked, affecting countries including the UK, Ireland and many other countries around Europe.

But Twitter doesn’t actually believe its own statement, because the company doesn’t actually treat all users equally.

Another 30 Politwoops-linked accounts around the world, and overseen by the Open State Foundation, have also been cut off from the service. There is vast value in tracking deleted public tweets, which offered an intimate perspective on politicians and how they communicate with their constituents.

It is unclear as to why Twitter took this decision. It, like all the other Politwoops accounts, was extensively used by the media to investigate instances of deception, corruption and ineptitude.

“These days whether it’s Politwoops or whatever, anything a politician says is findable”, he said.