
Twitter has killed Politwoops, which monitored politicians' deleted tweets - cgtyoder
http://thenextweb.com/2015/08/23/speak-truth-to-power-just-not-on-twitter/
======
gruez
>Imagine how nerve-wracking – terrifying, even – tweeting would be if it was
immutable and irrevocable?

Then don't tweet dumb stuff? The implication that tweets - and by extension,
history - should be mutable feels like 1984.

~~~
delish
I agree with

> The implication that tweets - and by extension, history - should be mutable
> feels like 1984.

You've pointed out the problem: people in a democracy need access to the
truest history possible; mutable history is a slippery slope.

But I disagree with

> Then don't tweet dumb stuff?

The challenges we're facing are new, and need new solutions. Political
entities are acting on incomplete information and perspective; inevitably,
they'll tweet dumb stuff (like I and many on HN have). I'm not saying that
they should be able to delete tweets, I'm saying that politicians haven't had
this ability before. Now that they have it, we (the democracy) have to decide
what to do about it. "Don't tweet dumb stuff" is impractical and simplistic
(sorry!).

Considering a democratic populace wants from its leaders intelligence,
strategy, and (at least in the US) _authenticity_ , American leaders will be
struggling with a tension between authenticity and advertisement. This
struggle leads to the deleting of tweets. I don't know the solution; knowing
the solution is a different matter.

~~~
angersock
_I don 't know the solution; knowing the solution is a different matter._

The solution is to actually _be_ intelligent, strategic, and authentic. On a
really good day, a given politician is batting two of three there.

I think that part of the accountability of these folks is _precisely_ that
their gaffs are on easy public record. If we allow memory holes for the elite,
they can keep fucking up and we're none the wiser.

------
danso
For those unfamiliar with the Twitter API: the Streaming API pushes out
notifications of when users who are eligible to show up in your timeline (i.e.
users whom you follow) have deleted a message:

[https://dev.twitter.com/streaming/overview/messages-
types#st...](https://dev.twitter.com/streaming/overview/messages-
types#status_deletion_notices_delete)

Politiwoops used monitored this to see which tweets it has previously
collected were now deleted. You can peruse the Politwoops source code to see
the details:

[https://github.com/sunlightlabs/politwoops-tweet-
collector](https://github.com/sunlightlabs/politwoops-tweet-collector)

Twitter's complaint is that its terms of service forbids ignoring those
deletion messages...but in the past, Twitter had turned a blind eye to what
Politwoops was doing. Whatever the reason for the crackdown now, it doesn't
mean you can't manually try to track these embarrassing tweets and then
publish them under fair use protections...in fact, the Anthony Weiner scandal,
in which a user noticed an accidentally posted DM, was what sparked Politwoops
in the first place. It's just you can't do it on a wide-scale, automated basis
via API.

I'm kind of surprised Politwoops informal waiver lasted this long...or rather,
that no one else has applied its open source code to the tracking of
celebrities...if that had ever happened (say, as an informal service of TMZ or
Gawker), I have no doubt Twitter would shut that down, as celebrities would be
spooked by having their mistakes be essentially non-deletable...and their
protests would carry a lot more notice than politicians'.

edit: Another relevant link: the unitedstates/congress-legislators repo, which
is a crowdsourced listing (augmented by a automated framework) of Congress
social media accounts: [https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-
legislators](https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators)

------
krisdol
If you've ever worked with Twitter's API, you should know that not honoring
deletes on your app is against the TOS. It doesn't matter what accounts are
being monitored, when a tweet is deleted by the account, you have to delete it
from your server.

~~~
ceejayoz
TOSes can't be illegal, and I'd argue that requiring deletion of tweets by
public officials constitutes some sort of violation of open records / freedom
of information laws.

~~~
DannyBee
You seem really confused about how this works. If your argument is "twitter
can't delete these due to it violating US law" that is an argument about
twitter, and not it's TOS.

If your argument is "people don't have to follow the TOS because the TOS
requires them to not comply with the law", that is simply wrong. If the TOS
asks you to do something illegal in your country, it does not make the TOS
illegal per-se. It means _you can 't use the service_, because _you can 't
comply with the TOS_. There generally is no "well, i can do whatever i want
and it's twitter's problem because i can't comply with the TOS". The fact that
you can't comply for legal reasons is _your_ problem, not the TOS's or
Twitters.

~~~
nmcfarl
The "you can't use the service" because the TOS conflicts with the laws in you
locality bit isn't necessarily true - it varies a lot by country. Plenty of
places just invalidate the parts of your TOS (or any other contract) that
conflict with the law. Which leaves it up to the company to decide whether
they wish to pursue business in that locality.

INAL

~~~
DannyBee
IAAL :) So, "conflict with the law" is a not-well-defined term.

There are 196 countries, so yes, you could say it varies. But i'm not sure
which are the "plenty" you are thinking about, and i'd love to see specific
examples of what you are thinking about.

Generally, most countries have pretty consistent law here. If the contract is
a contract for you to perform something illegal (like murder), that will not
be enforced. A contract that says "you must do X if you wish to use our
service", in basically any reasonable country you can think of, is not going
to be invalidated if you can't do X because it's illegal when done in very
certain ways in very specific circumstances.

This is because, again, in general, you can't claim the benefit of the
contract (using the service) but not have to have the burden.

~~~
nmcfarl
I kind of thought the generally consistent law was the way you describe it –
however my not a lawyer understanding was if the contract requires X which
violates the law in a very specific circumstance in a very specific way that
particular clause under that particular circumstance, that particular way
would be void, but the whole contract would not and would still stand -
benefits and burdens combined. Including that clause, under "normal"
circumstances.

Which is basically to say my understanding was that, in most countries, you
can reasonably sign a legal contract and know you will never have to commit an
illegal action in pursuit of it. And if your counterpart in the contract
really wants you to commit an illegal action it's on them to decide whether
they want to do business in a country where the action is it illegal. Not on
you.

Once again, IANAL. And my understanding could be way wrong.

~~~
DannyBee
"Which is basically to say my understanding was that, in most countries, you
can reasonably sign a legal contract and know you will never have to commit an
illegal action in pursuit of it. "

This is false :)

~~~
nmcfarl
That is stupid scary.

How does it square with your murder statement above?

~~~
DannyBee
If the _only_ way to complete a contract is to perform an illegal act, you
will be excused from performance.

But if you have an alternative, it's a valid contract for the legal
alternative.

IE if i say "i'll pay you $1000, and you will deliver to me rice or smuggled
opium", this is a valid contract to pay $1000 for rice. Also as i mentioned,
you will generally be required to pay restitution. That is, pay back any
benefit and least stop using/doing whatever benefit you are accruing(in this
case, i presume using the service).

So you can't use it to your advantage.

------
smegel
> was extensively used by the media to investigate instances of deception,
> corruption and ineptitude.

Because getting an intern to hack up a 5 minute Python script to do the same
is too much effort? OK maintaining a list of current politicians current
Twitter accounts is probably where the work is, but if you are interested in a
number of prominent accounts this is not that hard a task.

~~~
hanniabu
Comments like this make me realize how little I know >.<

~~~
patrickaljord
The twitter api allows to get a feed per author name, so if you have a list of
users, that's pretty easy. All you need to do is use a basic http client lib
in your prefered language to do the http query and then some basic html css
skills to show the result there :)

~~~
hanniabu
I've never worked with the twitter api, but now that you mention that, I see
where you're going with it. Does seem pretty straight forward now.

------
everyone
Politwoops could circumvent this problem by just not publishing the tweets to
twitter. They could just put them on a website, and maybe even aggregate the
politicians other communications. No?

Though generally I feel that anyone _at all_ being judged on an instant 140
character message is pretty sad state of affairs. Meaningful debate (political
and otherwise) with evidence based arguments and so on seems like a naive
fantasy these days.

~~~
mattzito
No, alas - the Twitter terms of service are very clear. If you are storing a
tweet, when someone deletes that tweet you have to delete all of your copies
of it. Full stop.

~~~
MichaelGG
It'd be very hard for Twitter to determine which API account is not honouring
deletes.

~~~
nathancahill
What? How would that be hard to determine? You need an API key to use the API.

~~~
cinquemb
Here, have some api keys:
[https://github.com/search?l=php&p=4&q=access_token+access_to...](https://github.com/search?l=php&p=4&q=access_token+access_token_secret+twitter&ref=searchresults&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93)

------
tptacek
I can't blame them. These things are incredibly toxic to the Twitter
community. Already, you have to warn everyone who joins the site not to delete
anything because people run services that highlight things that get deleted.

I mean that descriptively, not normatively. I mean: no matter how you slice
the public interest, these things are clearly harmful to Twitter itself.

 _Obviously_ , blocking them doesn't actually help the situation; once you
publish something on the Internet, it's out there, and people can come up with
100 different ways to get around Twitter's restrictions.

~~~
Mithaldu
I don't believe repeating this viewpoint is useful. It is a kneejerk reaction
that in my opinion fails to take the _actual_ situation into account.

This wasn't a service monitoring everyone, this was a service monitoring
elected officials, whose statements, whatever they are, are part of the public
record. This is especially important as particularly politicians derive a lot
of their power from what they say (and often promise) to their constituents,
regardless of whether they actually stick to what they say or not.

~~~
girvo
While I personally feel that Twitter taking down this service is a shame, and
yet another sign of how reliance on these private companies for expression of
free speech is never going to work, tptacek is right. When it comes down to
it, Twitter as a private company is completely allowed to do this, and in fact
it is in their interest to do so; these services harm Twitter as a whole,
despite being (in my opinion) a net good for society. Of course Twitter would
act in it's own interests here.

~~~
themartorana
There's a lot that is legal that is morally reprehensible. Like bringing the
world to the brink of financial collapse and then having governments bail out
the institutions responsible while absolutely no one went to jail for the
crime.

Sure Twitter is allowed to do this. It has nothing to do with whether the
attempt to alter (or delete) history is morally reprehensible or not.

------
gjolund
Yeah but they didn't kill the api's that ran the service. Seems like a someone
on the twitter board got a call on a red phone.

------
kelukelugames
I'm 100% for non public figures to have their tweets deleted. Different case
for publicly elected officials.

------
brlewis
I reworded Twitter's statement to make its nonsense more obvious:

Imagine how nerve-wracking -- terrifying, even -- making public statements
would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?

------
r721
Can't one manually archive "interesting" tweets with archive.org or
archive.is? Or their problem was with the scale of operations?

------
ikurei
What about turning the service to an events feed yous suscribe to? If it's
just a log of "Politician X tweeted Y ... Politician X deleted tweet Y", would
that be against the TOS too? You aren't storing tweets, just emailing or
RSS'ing them, do you still have to delete them?

EDIT: spelling

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hfpn
Imagine what Hilary might have deleted from her private emails if politicians
try to delete what is public

------
totony
I find it odd that no one compares this to real life:

If I say "Tom said y", it is perfectly okay, why is this any different online?
Why should what you say online be treated any different than what you say in
front of other people?

------
pvdebbe
I wonder what's going to happen with the RSS feeds of tweets. They usually get
everything verbatim, and if readers read from it often enough, the tweet's
done.

~~~
moreati
There are still RSS feeds of tweets? I thought Twitter turned those off years
ago

~~~
pvdebbe
Maybe they are gone. Haven't checked lately :-)

------
lcswi
We need more decentralised, distributed, censorship resistant service.

------
linkydinkandyou
And twitter wonders why they can't find a revenue model that works.

~~~
adventured
They already found one.

They'll likely hit $3.5 billion in annual revenue within two years. One year
after that, they'll be the size of Yahoo (which is 12 years older than
Twitter). They're already on a revenue ramp dramatically better than the one
Netflix has had.

If that isn't a model that works, I can't wait to see the one that does.

Twitter's primary financial problem is an unnecessarily bloated cost
structure.

~~~
poopsintub
They spend a ton on data centers and talent. Last quarter there was no user
growth and profit per share was 7 cents. Shareholders definitely don't agree
with you about this.

~~~
adventured
What's not to agree with exactly? The fact is they grew sales 61% - with zero
user growth. For a company that large to be growing that fast, they're very
clearly having no problems with growing the business.

They need 47% growth in the next four quarters, and then 36% growth in the
four quarters after that, to hit $3.5 billion in sales. Given first quarter
growth was 74%, then second quarter growth was 61%, it's not a far stretch to
hit 47% over the next four.

Shareholders have sent the stock down on the basis of user growth, not sales
growth.

Twitter has three problems.

1) They're not Facebook, it is not about users, and they should stop trying to
be something other than a broadcast platform. It's about consumption.

2) They were extremely overvalued right out of the gate. There was a lot of
delusional thinking around their potential. There's one Facebook, there isn't
going to be another any time soon. Twitter will never be another Google type
company.

3) They're carrying vastly more cost in their business than they need to. They
have 36% the head count of Facebook, with 12% of the sales. They've stacked
the business on the premise they were going to be a massive company like
Facebook - they're not, it's time to adjust costs accordingly.

~~~
DarthMader
You consider their current IPO level price point overvalued then? At what
price point would you buy then?

