Twitter will no longer give Politwoops and Diplotwoops access to archives of EU politicians’ and diplomats’ deleted tweets.
The Open State Foundation (OSF) said Twitter announced that it would be cutting its access off in 30 countries, including deleted tweets of Members of European Parliament, on Friday. Politiwoops was already barred from deleted tweets from U.S. politicians in May.
Politwoops automatically monitored politicians’ profiles for deleted tweets and published them on their site, while Diplotwoops did the same for diplomats and embassies around the world.
“The ability to delete one’s Tweets — for whatever reason — has been a long-standing feature of Twitter for all users,” a Twitter spokesperson told POLITICO. “Recently, we identified several services that used the feature we built to allow for the deletion of tweets to instead archive and highlight them. We subsequently informed these services of their noncompliance,” the spokesperson said, adding that Twitter then blocked the services from accessing such tweets.
According to the OSF, Twitter said the decision to remove the functionality came after much soul-searching.
“Imagine how nerve-racking — terrifying, even — tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?” OSF said Twitter wrote. “No one user is more deserving of that ability than another. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user’s voice.”
OSF Director Arjan El Fassed disagreed with this sentiment. “What politicians say in public should be available to anyone,” he said. “Even when tweets are deleted, it’s part of parliamentary history … This is not about typos but it is a unique insight on how messages from elected politicians can change without notice.”
While some may expect politicians to cheer at the news that Politwoops will no longer be tracking deleted tweets, support for the site has come from some unexpected sources.
“I suffered for it but it was a great lesson for me in how to use Twitter” — Robert Halfon
U.K. MP Robert Halfon, who was on the receiving end of a Politwoops deleted tweet drama, is ambivalent about the site’s demise.
“These days whether it’s Politwoops or whatever, anything a politician says is findable,” he said. “That is impossible to not know unless you’re completely on another planet.”
Halfon’s Politwoops snafu came after he retweeted a tribute to now-disgraced television personality Jimmy Saville at the time of his death. Two years later, after allegations that Savile was a prolific and known sex offender surfaced, Halfon says his retweet was retweeted again. He then deleted his original retweet (knowing it would be public knowledge, he says) and initially blamed the retweet on hackers.
“I stupidly thought I’d been hacked and rather than waiting and checking what it was all about, I deleted the tweet and said that I was deleting it because I’d been hacked,” Halfon said. “Then everybody thought I was lying, but it was completely not true. How am I supposed to remember every tweet or retweet from years ago?”
“I suffered for it but it was a great lesson for me in how to use Twitter.”
Politwoops has claimed several high-profile scalps and flushed plenty of faces since it was founded in the Netherlands in 2010.
Old tweets die hard
Old tweets cost Mark Verheijen his job as a Dutch MP. Or at least contributed to his resignation. Verheijen was a fast-rising star in the Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy of current Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
In 2011 Verheijen became the party’s interim chairman at the age of 33 and then an MP at the age of 36. But accusations soon surfaced that Verheijen had fiddled his expenses during his time as a regional parliamentarian in the province Limburg. He deleted an old tweet linking a party event and the cost of a trip he had made in Limburg using a car and driver.
The tweet was preserved by Politwoops:
DT @markverheijen1: Vanmiddag weer terug in provincie van @Cdkfryslan bij het Skûtsjesilen rondom … http://t.co/nHG9Y1Hm1n
— Politwoops NL (@PolitwoopsNL) January 23, 2015
Verheijen resigned his position as an MP in February after an internal party investigation raised concerns over his conduct.
POLITICO could not reach Verheijen for comment.
Public private partnerships
Belgium’s former prime minister Yves Leterme had a hard time distinguishing his public Twitter account from his private messaging services. He notoriously tweeted a personal message unlikely to have been intended for an audience of thousands. Translated: “Good morning boe. I’m just getting up now. Xx”
DT @YLeterme: Goeie morgen boe… Kga nu nog maar opstaan. Xx http://t.co/qJD463oP5E
— Politwoops BE (@PolitwoopsBE) January 29, 2014
It was the latest in a series of gaffes by the Belgian, who tweeted “Is Henry with you now?” in 2012, sent out a tweet stating “Want to learn to know you. You to ?” during a state visit to Congo in 2010, and several other all-too-private messages to his followers on the micro-blogging site.
Requests for comment to Leterme were not immediately returned.
Additional reporting by Cynthia Kroet.