Months after Twitter ban, social media watchdog Politwoops is back

NEW YORK: Politwoops is back! The political watchdog is live once again in 25 countries, four months after being banned by Twitter.

If you don't know it, Politwoops is a kind of social media watchdog. It automatically monitors the Twitter feeds of politicians and highlights whenever they delete a tweet.

Sometimes these are just typos -but other times it caught politicians trying to distance themselves from prior statements or shift their position on an issue.

In one high-profile incident, Politwoops was able to highlight half a dozen politicians welcoming a US soldier and former Taliban captive back to the US -and then deleting their tweets after the case became politically charged. However, in August 2015, Politwoops was banned globally from Twitter after the social network revoked its API access. Twitter justified the decision on the grounds that it violated the Developer Agreement, which requires services not to point out when material is deleted. “Imagine how nerve-racking -terrifying, even -tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?“ Twitter said in a statement.