Twitter effectively shuts down Politwoops

Twitter has taken away the Sunlight Foundation's access to its developer API, effectively shutting down the foundation's popular Politwoops site which tracked deleted tweets by politicians. The site recently stopped publishing. Initially, the foundation said it was a technical issue before a Twitter spokesperson confirmed they had revoked the API access. "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. Honoring the expectation of user privacy for all accounts is a priority for us, whether the user is anonymous or a member of Congress," the spokesperson said.

In a 'eulogy' for Politwoops, Sunlight Foundation president Christopher Gates said Twitter's decision was completely out of the blue for the foundation after years of running the site with Twitter's blessing. Gates wrote that when Politwoops launched in 2012, the foundation worked with Twitter on the API issue to ensure a human editor would weed out low-level tweets, and with Twitter's blessing launched the site. Their recent decision shows that the Internet isn't a true public forum, he added. "Unfortunately, Twitter’s decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn’t truly a public square. Our shared conversations are increasingly taking place in privately owned and managed walled gardens, which means that the politics that occur in such conversations are subject to private rules. (In this case, Twitter’s terms of service for usage of its API.)"