This week Twitter formally shut down 30 sites dedicated to saving politicians’ deleted tweets. The sites, which are collectively known as Politwoops, were overseen by the Open State Foundation (OSF). OSF reported that Twitter suspended their API access as of Friday, August 21st.
The US arm of Politwoops was shut down in June of this year, but this new decision affects the rest of the countries all over the world.
The collection received a polite, albeit curt, explanation of why the app had to die from directly from Twitter’s support team:
“This decision followed thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors,” Twitter wrote, explaining that the change “was guided by the company’s core value to ‘defend and respect the user’s voice.'”
“The ability to delete one’s tweets — for whatever reason — has been a long-standing feature of the Twitter service,” the message continued. “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. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user’s voice.”
Twitter’s actions has been called “a major blow to gov’t transparency,” “a mistake,” “ridiculous” and down-right “evil.”
What do you think of Twitter’s actions? Warranted or sneaky? We would love to hear your views on the matter in the comments below.
