It just got a lot harder to hold politicians accountable for their tweets

The executives who once called Twitter the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party” don’t work at Twitter anymore. It shows. In June, Twitter abruptly cut off access to Politwoops, a website operated by the Sunlight Foundation that preserved deleted tweets sent by elected officials in the United States. Then last weekend, Twitter dropped the hammer on Politwoops’ sister services, cutting off access to Diplotwoops and Politwoops in 30 countries around the globe. In doing so, Twitter shut down dozens of popular services that enabled the public to see what diplomats, legislators, mayors, governors, presidents and other elected officials (or, in most cases, their staff) once had tweeted but then decided to delete, thus removing a layer of accountability for public speech. As author Rebecca MacKinnon wrote about in her seminal book about democracy in the age of the Internet, Consent of the Networked, we’re now living in an era in which much public speech is hosted on private platforms. Corporations own the social media networks, cable companies, radio and television stations, newspapers and online outlets (including The Huffington Post) that relay government officials’ proclamations to the general public.