Twitter recently decided to shut down Politwoops, a website which could save Politicians’ deleted tweets which was launched in 2012. This decision has left many people at Sunlight Foundation who conceived this idea, along with numerous internet activists, stunned.
This decision was made apparently because Twitter believed that the website had violated the company’s terms and conditions and that it would be best to shut it down. Sunlight Foundation has stated that it is unable to appeal to Twitter’s decision and they will go with it and shut down Politwoops.
Further, the speakers of Sunlight Foundation showed their disappoint in Twitter as the company had supported the project since 2012 and this sudden change of mind left them, for the lack of a better word, mystified.
They also added that their feeds from Twitter were cut down almost three weeks ago and the only direct communication they had was when Twitter informed them last night about their decision and that their decision was something Sunlight couldn’t appeal to. Moreover, Twitter denied reviewing any of the e-mail conversations the two companies had 3 years ago.
Twitter has been at this type of shutdowns for a while now and this just adds to their already bulky list. According to numerous media reports though, Twitter justifies the shutdown citing that it values its users’ privacy more than transparency.
