The website service known as PostGhost is not the most well-known or advertised on the Internet. However, it saw some use and crediting from news outlets and other such media.

What PostGhost does, or rather did, was to keep track of the Twitter accounts of quite a number of well-known public figures. Apart from its owner’s fame, the Twitter account had to be officially verified and it had to have a certain number of followers.

Whenever one of these observed accounts would tweet anything, post a picture, openly reply to somebody, PostGhost would print-screen, copy the data and save it to their own website’s archive which could be publically accessed.

PostGhost did not want popular public figures to ever be able to just deny or take-back having tweeted something.

The End Of PostGhost

According to Twitter, what PostGhost was doing was wrong. Twitter has contacted the site via e-mail and notified them that by having evidence and publicly displaying deleted tweets, they were violating the developer’s agreement and policy.

On Wednesday, July 6th, the website notified its user base that they would be shutting down for good. The entire affair was handled politely and civilized without any manner of drama.

As their goodbye to the world, the staff did state that they will be sorry to go and that when they began the project, they saw the tweets of verified public accounts as quotes spoken publicly. Anyone who would want to keep a record of such quotes would free to do so.

As several cases of what the public labeled as hypocrisy have occurred in the past, PostGhost seemed to have a good idea and the news services who credited it would agree.

However, Twitter is not the real world and it does come with a “Delete Tweet” button. People are allowed to change their minds and to shift their perspectives. Twitter seems to understand and value that.

PostGhost believes that the signal will not be stopped, however. They are certain that other parties or individuals will still keep track of public Twitter accounts. The will take screenshots to use for posterity if the time for social justice ever comes as they did in the past.

The issue with screenshots coming from public sources that have no backing or history or validity is that they can be accused of being fake. In its brief time on the web, PostGhost ensured a solid, unbiased reputation for themselves.

Image Courtesy of The Post Ghost Website.