Twitter brought down the hammer on the deleted-tweet saving site Politwoops this week and you could almost hear all of the 2016 hopefuls breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Politwoops, run by the government transparency advocacy group Sunlight Foundation, has tracked the deleted tweets of U.S. law-makers since 2012, making their Twitter “oops” last forever in cyberspace. “Forever” seems to have ended May 15, which was the last time the site was updated.
However, Twitter said the preserving of these deleted tweets, whether they were deleted because of a typo or something unauthorized that made an account look unfavorable, was directly in violation of the social media site’s privacy policy. The policy ensures users that deleted Tweets stay deleted.
In a statement to Gawker, Twitter explained the why the site hadn’t been able to be updated:
The Sunlight Foundation confirmed the news Wednesday via their Twitter account and the responses poured in from fans and politicians alike:
It’s true. @Twitter changed its mind and decided to kill Politwoops. We’re sad we’re losing this public record of deleted tweets.
— Sunlight Foundation (@SunFoundation) June 4, 2015
@sunfoundation @johnwonderlich Politwoops was too interesting for open dialog. Sad to see it go (but glad it never caught my typo/deletes!)
— Andrew Nebus (@AndrewNebus) June 4, 2015
@SunFoundation @TheFix @twitter Disappointing.
— Karen Harbert (@karenharbert) June 4, 2015
.@SunFoundation “like that thing you heard about where the Library of Congress archives all the tweets except you can actually see them”
— Eric Mill (@konklone) June 4, 2015
