Twitter has reinstated the Politwoops account, which keeps tabs on tweets deleted by politicians around the world.
After revoking access to its API this summer, Twitter says it has now reached a deal with the Sunlight Foundation and Open State Foundation to broker the return of Politwoops.
Although the idea behind Politwoops was to hold politicians accountable for the deleted statements, Twitter had previously argued that politicians had the same right to scrub tweets from the record as the rest of its user base.
However, the return had been hinted at by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey back in October.
At the time he said: “
Following the reinstatement, announced on Thursday, Jenn Topper, the communications director for The Sunlight Foundation, said: “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.”
In a post on its official blog (via VentureBeat) Twitter added: “We look forward to continuing our work with these important organizations, and using Twitter to bring more transparency to public dialogue.”
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.