The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Twitter Jack Dorsey

Politwoops back online after Twitter's Jack Dorsey pledges support for political transparency

Author

By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

January 5, 2016 | 3 min read

Politwoops, the tool tracking politicians’ deleted tweets which was banned last year, is now back online after Twitter boss Jack Dorsey reversed the decision and gave his support to the organisation.

Jack Dorsey reinstates Politwoops

Jack Dorsey reinstates Politwoops

Twitter pulled the plug on the social media tool last June, claiming that it violated user privacy, however the site is now back online after Dorsey singled out Politwoops as the kind of organisation that he wanted to support.

In October Dorsey publically advocated transparency in government when he said “we have a responsibility to continue to empower organisations that bring more transparency to public dialogue, such as Politwoops.”

Today Twitter announced that it will work with Politwoops’ parent site The Open Foundation and organisations affiliated with the site as it looks to offer more transparency to "public dialogue," especially in regards to tweets.

Users will once again be able to see deleted tweets from politicians in 25 nations across the world, including the US, most of Europe and parts of Asia.

Arjan El Fassed, director of Open State Foundation described the agreement as “great news for those who believe that the world needs more transparency.”

He said the next step will be to “continue and expand our work to enable the public to hold public officials accountable for their public statements.”

During the time in which the service was banned from Twitter the Open Reach Foundation developed new features for the social media monitoring tool.

Now US users will be able to search and filter through deleted tweets based on state, party and political position. It now also takes into account the fact that many deleted tweets are the result of simple typos or wrong links with the addition of a new date search option.

The site has restored tweets from before it was banned and will continue to add new tweets in order to help voters’ better hold politicians to account in the run up to US primaries and presidential election.

Twitter Jack Dorsey

More from Twitter

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +