Politwoops, the social media watchdog which catalogs deleted tweets of Politicians, is back on Twitter.
In a post at Twitter blogs, Twitter announced that it has come to an agreement with the Open State Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation, which operated the U.S. version of Politwoops to bring back the said social media watchdog.
"This agreement is great news for those who believe that the world needs more transparency. Our next step is now to continue and expand our work to enable the public to hold public officials accountable for their public statements," Arjan El Fassed, director of Open State Foundation, said in the blog post.
According to Business Insider, Politwoops was seen to empower organizations to bring more transparency to public dialogue. One notable instance where Politwoops played a major role was when politicians deleted their tweets praising the release of a U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan in order to distance their selves on the issue after questions about the past of the soldier emerge.
Politwoops, nonetheless, was banned globally from Twitter last August 2015 after the social media network terminated its API access, citing that what it provides is contrary to the Developer Agreement which requires services not to track or point out deleted tweets.
Twitter emphasized that deleting a tweet is the right of the user and is an expression of his or her voice.
This, however, sparked an outrage by Human rights groups who argued that public officials and politicians should accept the fact that every word that comes from them can be tracked and they should be accountable for that being public figures.
"Politwoops is an important tool for holding our public officials, including candidates and elected or appointed public officials, accountable for the statements they make, and we're glad that we've been able to reach an agreement with Twitter to bring it back online both in the US and internationally," Jenn Topper, communications director for The Sunlight Foundation, said in the blog post.
The Sunlight Foundation cited that they will be working to get Politwoops running again while the Open State Foundation highlighted that they are working to reestablish Politwoops in more than 30 countries where it was launched. Both organizations are also looking to expand the service to other countries.
Politwoops started in 2010 at Netherlands and has since expanded to various countries and parliaments including United Kingdom, Germany, France, Egypt, Argentina, Turkey and Greece, among many others.
What do you think of Twitter's reversal on its ban on Politwoops? How do you think it will help bring more transparency to public dialogue? Let us know in the comment section below.