More than a few politicians have tweeted something dumb they immediately regretted and swiftly deleted. But of course, those tweets never truly disappear after they've been published.
On Sunday, Twitter shut down a series of 30 sites owned by the Open State Foundation called Politwoops and Diplotwoops that store politicians' deleted tweets across 31 countries. In May, Twitter shut down the U.S. version of the site and has now closed the site in the other remaining countries, including Canada, France, the U.K. and Spain.
By this morning, the story had blown up online, making the front page of Reddit.
In a statement, Open State Foundation said Twitter asked to shut down the sites after a "thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors."
"Imagine how nerve-racking—terrifying, even—tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?" Twitter wrote. "No one user is more deserving of that ability than another. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user's voice."
Still, Open State Foundation's director stuck by his company's business model, saying, "What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record. Even when tweets are deleted, it's part of parliamentary history."
