• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 31, 2015

At the urging of CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter is bringing political watchdog Politwoops back into the fold.

This past summer, Twitter revoked Politwoops’ API access on the basis that it was violating the social giant’s Developer Agreement by highlighting deleted material.

Drawing attention to deleted tweets -- specifically those posted by elected officials and other public figures -- is exactly what Politwoops does. The point is to make it harder for politicians to backtrack, hedge their bets and otherwise manipulate the public.

At Twitter’s developer conference in October, Dorsey said it was exactly this type of public service that makes Twitter “great.”

“We have a responsibility to continue to empower organizations that bring more transparency to public dialogue, such as Politwoops,” Dorsey said. “We need to make sure we are serving all these organizations and developers in the best way, because that is what will make Twitter great.”

Twitter has therefore reached an agreement with the groups behind Politwoops, the Sunlight Foundation and the Open State Foundation.

Arjan El Fassed, director of Open State Foundation, said Politwoops can now continue its mission to bring greater transparency to governments the world over.

“Our next step is now to continue and expand our work to enable the public to hold public officials accountable for their public statements,” Fassed stated.

As for Twitter, Colin Crowell, vice president for Global Public Policy, said on Thursday: “We look forward to continuing our work with these important organizations, and using Twitter to bring more transparency to public dialogue.”