Say you’re a Tory minister, who – for whatever reason – retweeted a little rhyme calling the Labour party “full of queers”. Does the public deserve to know, even if you delete the tweet ten minutes later?
This is the question faced by Twitter, thanks to Politwoop, a site that logs deleted tweets from politicians in 30-odd countries around the world. The site shows the tweet, the device it was tweeted from, and how long it took for the politician to delete it again. Here’s the entry for Tory Business, Innovation and Skills minister Matt Hancock’s retweeted ditty (he later tweeted that the reposting was a “total accident”):
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