Twitter Celebrates The Return Of Politwoops, Which It Tried To Murder

from the welcome-back dept

One of the stranger stories from last year was the demise of Politwoops, the wonderful project designed to not let public figures tweet out brain-vomit and then disappear it all once the backlash ensues. This useful service, designed to let the public see what politicians really thought after their two-martini breakfasts, was eighty-sixed by Twitter over a ham-fisted claim that it was protecting users' expression, which is how it referred to deleting users' previous expressions. If you can twist your brain into a pretzel enough that any of that makes sense to you, you're a better brain-gymnast than I.

Well, Politwoops has been resurrected, and here to tell us how great that is, is the new CEO of Twitter, the company that initially killed it off.

A message from Twitter on Thursday suggests Jack Dorsey, who took over as permanent CEO of the company in October, is behind the about face. The message includes an excerpt from a speech given by Dorsey at an event in October where he said his company has “a responsibility to continue to empower organizations that bring more transparency to public dialogue, such as Politwoops.”

Dorsey continued, “We need to make sure we are serving all these organizations and developers in the best way, because that is what will make Twitter great. We need to listen, we need to learn, and we need to have this conversation with you. We want to start that today.”

It's a nice, well-crafted message, to be sure. That said, it wouldn't feel right to laud Twitter for about-facing a terrible attempt to knee-cap the usefulness of its own site. If Twitter is a platform chiefly about inter-expression, then hiding any of that expression is antithetical to its very purpose. Reinstating a service primarily useful to the public, once murdered out of deference to the elite class, is self-evidently the right thing to do, and the only lesson to be learned here is that Twitter's initial treatment of Politwoops was a major mistake to begin with.

Responding to Twitter’s decision to reinstate Politwoops, Jenn Topper, communications director for the Sunlight Foundation, described the archiving service as “an important tool for holding our public officials, including candidates and elected or appointed public officials, accountable for the statements they make,” adding, “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.”

As the article states, the timing for all this is of note, with the presidential race season transitioning from the "look at all the idiots running" phase into the "holy shit, this stuff actually matters" portion of the performance. Politicians will once again have to live with their statements, rather than be able to simply pretend they never existed, and this makes Twitter a more useful platform. All because it is returning to the open status that had made it great and not the closed platform it tried to become.

Filed Under: free speech, politwoops
Companies: twitter

Twitter's Excuse For Shutting Down Services That Highlight Deleted Politicians' Tweets Is Painfully Ridiculous

from the that's-just-wrong dept

A couple months ago, we wrote about Twitter shutting down Politwoops, a service from the Sunlight Foundation that highlighted tweets that politicians had posted... and then deleted. This was a useful tool for transparency, showing what kinds of tweets politicians delete. Frequently it was silly things like typos, but sometimes it caught and highlighted really ridiculous statements by politicians that they should have thought more about first. Twitters reasoning behind this made no sense at all at the time, claiming that it was about "honoring the expectation of user privacy." That's wrong. If you tweet publicly, there is no "expectation of privacy." You have done something publicly.

This weekend, this whole situation got more attention, as Twitter similarly shut down a number of similar services, including foreign instances of Politwoops run by the Open State Foundation. Once again, Twitter gave a reason... that made absolutely no sense:

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.

This is worse than the original reason. First of all, that's not terrifying at all. That's how life is, every day. You say something, people hear it/see it and they can repeat it or call you out on it if they disagree. And you can have a discussion. And, of course, you can later change your words, admit you made a mistake, or, yes, delete your tweet. But people might notice that. And that's fine. It's not terrifying. There's nothing "immutable" or "irrevocable" about Politwoops highlighting things that actually happened.

As for the next two lines, again, it makes no sense. There is nothing in Politwoops that makes one user "more deserving" of any ability than any other. Anyone can delete tweets. And anyone who saw the original tweet can call it out and highlight it. Yet, for whatever reason, Twitter has decided that it wants to give extra special protections to some users, by claiming that it's an abuse to actually build a system to automate such things. This is the opposite of enabling free speech. It's stifling it.

And, yes, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user's voice -- as is having someone highlight what you deleted. That's how this works. This move is profoundly disappointing by Twitter -- a company that regularly positions itself as a champion of free speech and being engaged in the political process.

Politicians say stupid stuff all the time (as does pretty much everyone). And people call them out on it. And no one ever argues that's an invasion of their privacy... except, apparently, Twitter. Once again, this is a reminder of why we should be focused on protocols instead of platforms for the services that enable free expression. When we rely on platforms, we have to live by their rules.

Filed Under: censorship, politicians, politwoops, privacy, public statements, right to be forgotten
Companies: twitter

Twitter Just Cut Off Politwoops In Another Effort To Keep The Platform Closed

from the twits dept

Mike recently made the case that in the information age, platforms would do better to be open rather than closed. Being open means allowing that thing you started to branch off in many directions making you more useful to more people. Being closed means you get control. Yay. One of the examples of a platform that had initially been open and has since been becoming more closed is Twitter. What once began as a platform that was built up by users and outside groups all making even better use of Twitter than Twitter had managed for itself, has since devolved into stories of staunch refusal to allow the evolution to continue.

The most recent example of this is, sadly, that Twitter appears to have eighty-sixed Politwoops, the wonderful project for preserving the tweets deleted by government officials and public officials.

Twitter’s decision to pull the plug on Politwoops is a reminder of how the Internet isn’t truly a public square. Our shared conversations are increasingly taking place in privately owned and managed walled gardens, which means that the politics that occur in such conversations are subject to private rules. (In this case, Twitter’s terms of service for usage of its API.) Days after Politwoops launched in 2012, Twitter contacted the Sunlight Foundation and told us, "Your service violates our API Terms of Service on a fundamental level." We explained the goals of the project and agreed to create a human curation workflow to ensure that the site screened out corrected low-value tweets like typos, links and Twitter handles. We implemented this layer of journalistic judgment with blessings from Twitter and the site continued.

We are truly mystified as to what prompted the change of heart, and it's deeply disappointing to see Twitter kill a project they had supported since 2012. It is also disturbing to us that our feed was cut almost three weeks ago and our only direct communication came from Twitter last night, when we were told that their decision was not something that we could appeal, and, most surprisingly, they were not interested in reviewing any of the email conversation from 2012. Clearly, something changed — and we’re not likely to ever know what it was.

You can sense the boiling anger and pure confusion beneath the surface of the text. Twitter, which had been fully aware of what Politwoops was, did, and why, had allowed the service to operate for years and then suddenly pulled the plug for the same reason it gave initially before dismissing that reason. This would be enough to infuriate any developer, nevermind one focused solely on creating more openness and accountability. It must feel like a slap in the face to the Sunlight Foundation to have the opposite of their aims be utilized in the shuttering of their service.

That said, why did Twitter do this? Well, in a statement to Gawker, who had reported on the topic, Twitter indicated this was all about user privacy.

Earlier today we spoke to the Sunlight Foundation, to tell them we will not restore Twitter API access for their Politwoops site. We strongly support Sunlight’s mission of increasing transparency in politics and using civic tech and open data to hold government accountable to constituents, but preserving deleted Tweets violates our developer agreement. Honoring the expectation of user privacy for all accounts is a priority for us, whether the user is anonymous or a member of Congress.

Which tells us nothing, exactly as I'm sure Twitter intended. This is simply a recitation of the excuse, not the reason why the decision made in 2012 suddenly got reversed with very little communication to the Sunlight Foundation. So what's the answer?

Control, of course. The doors that close on once-open platforms operate on greased hinges, it seems, where the smallest thrust on those doors causes them to slam shut. Twitter is allowed to do this, of course, but closing the platform that still uses the "@" symbol and retweets, both conceived of by people outside of Twitter, isn't a recipe for continued relevance.

Filed Under: api, closed, information, open, politwoops, transparency
Companies: sunlight foundation, twitter

CISPA Sponsor Tweets, Then Deletes, About How Much More Lobbying Dollars Have Come From Pro-CISPA Groups

from the read-before-you-retweet dept

Ah, transparency. The Sunlight Foundation put together Politwoops last year to highlight tweets that elected officials deleted. Mostly it's innocuous stuff, but sometimes some real gems come through. For example, the account of Rep. Mike Rogers, who is the main Representative behind CISPA, retweeted but then deleted a MapLight tweet about how the House Intelligence Committee, which Rogers chairs, "received 15 times more from pro-CISPA groups than anti-CISPA orgs." You can see MapLight's data here. Of course, we've said from the beginning that much of this "cybersecurity" stuff is really about money, and that tweet just highlighted that plenty of that money is flowing directly into Congress. Obviously, that doesn't look too good for Rep. Rogers (or whatever poor staffer runs his Twitter feed), and it took someone all of 23 minutes to realize that Rogers was more or less promoting the fact that his side had received 15x more in lobbying dollars -- and that probably doesn't look too good. Still, for those who believe in transparency, it was a nice admission, albeit a brief one.

Update: Oh, and it gets better. Rogers has been using the hashtag #CISPAalert in a bunch of his tweets in support of CISPA. But that hashtag was set up by the EFF, and every tweet that uses that hashtag helps fund the EFF in its fight against CISPA.

Rogers (R-Mich.)'s official Twitter account has, since Wednesday, been using the hashtag #CISPAalert to address criticism of his Cyber Intelligence Security Protection Act (CISPA). Activists are wrong, he says. CISPA wouldn't allow government "monitoring anyone’s email or personal information."

But the congressman—or whoever runs his Twitter account—doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. A domain name registrar called Namecheap is running a promotion: offering a dollar to Internet activists at the Electronic Frontier Foundation for each tweet with that hashtag. The EFF is actively campaigning against CISPA, calling it a “privacy-invading cybersecurity spying bill.”

I'm sure once CISPA is in place, Rogers will figure out this Twitter stuff.

Filed Under: cispa, house intelligence committee, lobbying dollars, mike rogers, politwoops, transparency