Twitter has reportedly entered talks with advocates of the political transparency tool Politwoops, but it remains unclear whether this could lead to a revival of the tool’s recently disabled tweeting operations.
Twitter’s present CEO Jack Dorsey only permanently took on the top job after his company pulled the plug on the US arm of Politwoops in June and the UK counterpart in August. Just over a week ago, Dorsey hinted at a turnaround, speaking of Twitter’s “responsibility [to] continue to empower organizations that bring more transparency to public dialogue, such as organizations like Politwoops.”
Today, The Hill reported that, on Friday, Twitter “reached out” to the Sunlight Foundation and the Open State Foundation, which both ran Politwoops. Another group, Access Now, that had campaigned in favor of Politwoops has also confirmed that it has been in conversations with Twitter since late August.
However, Nicko Margolies, who ran Politwoops before the social networking site took action against it, has remarked: “It was nice to hear Jack Dorsey admit that Twitter made a mistake … to shut down Politwoops, but I haven’t seen any action to back up those words”.
