Even politicians post things they regret later!
Twitter on Thursday announced the return of Politwoops. Politwoops, the site that aggregated deleted tweets from politicians and their staff, was blocked by Twitter in June.
Under heavy public shaming Twitter graciously reached an accord with The Sunlight Foundation and The Open State Foundation, to allow Politwoops to continue exploiting Twitter private user content for political gain.
“Politwoops is an important tool for holding our public officials, including candidates and elected or appointed public officials, accountable for the statements they make,” said Jenn Topper, The Sunlight Foundation’s communications director, “and we’re glad that we’ve been able to reach an agreement with Twitter to bring it back online both in the U.S. and internationally.”
Twitter effectively shut down Politwoops in June when it revoked The Sunlight Foundation’s access to its developer, API. So, in essence, Politiwoops would use the Twitter data feed to extract damaging tweets to publicly shame Twitter users (politicians) and are not held to any standards other than to leverage it for their political agenda. Twitter’s position was that preserving deleted tweets was a violation of the company’s developer agreement.
Politwoops was launched officially in 2012 by the Sunlight Foundation, a liberal group who claim their goal is for government transparency. The site would publish all deleted tweets, including those removed for typos along with ones banished after they had second thoughts….or received backlash, etc.
The left’s obsession with “transparency”, clocked as a bipartisanship, is over-played and obvious as to their ultimate goals. It isn’t so much about keeping the inner machinations of government transparent as it is about exposing private activities so private actors can be publicly exposed to political pressure. The idea is that, if conservatives take enough heat for giving to politically incorrect causes, they will stop doing so.
The Sunlight Foundation is yet another nonprofit that preens itself on its political neutrality but turns out to have leaders and funding almost entirely from the left. “Transparency” is its battle cry, and it has an impressive array of projects underway. And yet it never seems troubled by groups on the left that revel in political intimidation, and its leaders have included the kind of “progressives” who find liberal Democrats too conservative.
Campaign donor transparency has been hailed by many on the Left as a panacea for what ails America. If only everyone’s political donations were made public on the Internet, all would be right, they theorize. But in seeking to make campaign finance data public, the goals of the Left—and in particular of the Washington, D.C.-based Sunlight Foundation—are less than pure.
The Left’s obsession with “transparency” is a one-way street. It isn’t so much about keeping the inner machinations of government transparent as it is about exposing private activities so private actors can be publicly exposed to political pressure. The idea is that, if conservatives take enough heat for giving to politically incorrect causes, they will stop doing so. This, leftists believe, will transform the political giving environment and at long last the power of the eeevil rich and corporate America to dominate politics will be broken.
