"Twitter said that its decision to suspend access to Politwoops followed a `thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors` and that it doesn`t distinguish between users," the foundation wrote on its website.
"Imagine how nerve-racking - terrifying, even - tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?...Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user`s voice," the foundation quoted Twitter as saying in its message.
Private users and political figures
"They say that they don`t make a distinction between users," the Open State Foundation`s Director Arjan El Fassed countered. "We feel that there is a clear distinction to be made between politicians and elected public officials, and ordinary citizens," El Fassed tells DW.
The online activist believes that any statement made by a public figure or a politician is part of a public record. "It says something about political insights or political opinions and it says something about political behavior," he argues.
Most tweets are deleted because of typing errors, El Fassed explains. A minority of them, about five percent, are tweets that have been removed on purpose because "they changed their mind or some politician regretted that he or she tweeted. These are tweets that have political relevance," according to El Fassed.
The Politwoop advocate cites the example of Dutch politician Mark Verheijen, an MP of the liberal VVD party, who deleted tweets while being investigated for using government funds for his own political party. Other examples of careless and clumsy tweeting include France`s Prime Minister Manuell Valls as well as Germany`s Peer Steinbrück.
After the Twitter ban
Politwoops was initiated in 2010 at a hackathon in the Netherlands. Since then, the Open State Foundation has been monitoring profiles of national politicians, including those of Members of European Parliament, for deleted tweets and made them visible.
The organization launched a similar site called Diplotwoops, which screened deleted messages by diplomats and embassies from around the world.
Twitter suspended the Application Programming Interface (API) access for the US version of Politwoops in May this year, which means the Politwoops website will be inaccessible from the social media platform.
Explaining Twitter`s concept, El Fassed says the website has an "open API" which developers use to build applications and use Twitter analytics. The use of the API involves agreeing to Twitter`s terms and conditions. "Twitter said we violated the terms of agreement by showing deleted tweets of politicians," he explains.
As a result, Twitter has banned the foundation`s websites 30 countries where it was operating. These include Argentina, Chile, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, Australia, South Korea and India.
"Now we are exploring a number of ways, doing legal research and also exploring technical ways to see if we can make the deleted tweets by politicians still available," El Fassed tells DW.
More about:
