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Twitter To Revive Politwoops, Archive of Politicians' Deleted Tweets (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter shut down Politwoops, a network of deleted tweets from politicians, this summer with the statement: "Imagine how nerve-racking – terrifying, even – tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable? No one user is more deserving of that ability than another. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user's voice." To the joy of open-government advocates and with the help of government transparency nonprofits, Twitter says it will work to get Politwoops up and running again. "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 U.S. and internationally," said Jenn Topper, communications director for The Sunlight Foundation
You don't need an agreement to record this stuff.
You do if you need access to the Twitter API to do it, and Twitter takes away said access, which is what they did.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Sure, it would have taken a little bit more effort, but this sort of thing should have been built using the standard Twitter interface, just follow all politicians using multiple anonymous accounts and then note whatever they delete. Then it would have been secure against any bull the lead Twits might decide whether it be blatantly revoking their access or secretly moderating their access. And you can't really say no one expected there would be an attempt to shut it down.
Another stupid thing is expecting to be able to publish something publicly, and then keep it a secret.
Finally, the Twits thought they could shut down this service, even though lots of people wanted it and the only way to really stop it would be to shut down their own company entirely.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It is estimated that on average, deleted tweets by politicians contain exactly 10 times more truth than the ones they didn't delete
It's ad revenue. Twitter finally noticed that the "tweets" that often get erased by these bozos are being captured on screenshots anyway and being shared via imgur or some other image hosting site so their action of taking this down over the summer had only a minimal net effect on protecting the people who complained about it. Now that they have started this branch of their service up again, there will be no need for anyone to screenshot and repost the offending comment so the revenue from the ads will go into Twitter's pockets instead of another sources.
You only have to look at any major national newspaper's want ads to realise that "Political Twitter Correspondent" is an actual job. The candidates probably have some say in what gets posted, but they are not the ones typing this stuff out anymore then the actors who hire publicists to do the exact same thing.