The Story of a Twitter API that Went Awry: Deciphering the Politwoops Shutdown

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A month ago, Politwoops was a ragingly popular operation, tracking and publicly archiving politicians' deleted tweets in over 30 countries. It still is, but in May 2015, something odd happened. The American version of the Politwoops site unexpectedly stopped working, while its counterparts abroad experienced no tech problems and continued to archive deleted tweets seamlessly. When the Sunlight Foundation (SF), the creators of Politwoops-USA, called Twitter's support desk, the company eventually stated that the site violated its Developer Agreement & Policy.

This wasn't the first time that Twitter had told the organization to stop collecting the deleted tweets of American politicians. Back in 2012, Twitter informed the SF that Politwoops was in violation of its Application Program Interface (API) Terms of Service; at that juncture, though, the SF explained its mission, goals, and review process to Twitter, and after some back and forth, the two parties agreed that Politwoops-USA could continue to access and republish parts of Twitter's data stream.

This time around, however, it appears that Twitter isn't planning to restore Politwoops’ access to the API. It's worth noting that deleted tweets have posed a problem to Twitter in one way or another almost since its inception, and in the interim, users have launched a variety of projects to deal with the controversial content. Tom Scott's "Tweleted" recovered deleted tweets by comparing a person's Twitter history to Twitter search; he shut it down after Twitter stopped deleted messages from showing up in the Twitter Search. Bradley Griffith's Undetweetable took another approach and archived deleted tweets by anyone entered into its database. His project was much far-reaching than Politwoops, as it could collect deleted tweets by Alec Baldwin, Miley Cyrus, rambling professors, employees of publicly traded stocks, and completely anonymous Twitter users. Citing API concerns, Twitter shut it down almost immediately.

The recent Politwoops case has led many to problematize the social architecture of Twitter. Responses have greatly varied, ranging from the outraged to the elated. Some, like Joshua Benton of Harvard's Nieman Lab, have eulogized the project. Others, like Nathaniel Mott of Pando Daily, have come to Twitter's defense, echoed earlier concerns about the service, and praised the company’s desire to protect users' privacy.

Today, other questions remain. Is Twitter becoming more of a private platform than a public square? What might happen to other branches of Politwoops in India, Argentina, Bermuda, Tunisia, the European Union, and elsewhere? What sort of mechanisms might be used in the future to preserve deleted tweets? Who, ultimately, has control over tweets? What extra-judicial norms, laws, and community standards dictate Twitter users' behavior? Will Twitter's global public policy team adopt a standard approach towards all branches of Politwoops in the coming weeks?

For insight, Muira McCammon talked to Nicko Margolies (Politwoops' Project Lead at the Sunlight Foundation), Arjan El Fassed (Director of the Open State Foundation, which founded Politwoops in the Netherlands), and Prof. Michael Beurskens (a Twitter researcher and intellectual property law lecturer based at the University of Bonn in Germany).