Despite the fact that nearly every member of Congress is on Twitter, Politwoops shows there are still those who awkwardly cut corners — with poor results.
Sometimes it takes a deeply unfortunate mistake to highlight a common problem to a wider audience. Politwoops is filled with deleted tweets automatically sent from other social media services, but a deletion this week by Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., demonstrates the dangers of not having a human involved in the creation of tweets.
When Gardner’s Instagram account shared a photo of him on the phone, a truncated version of the Instagram comment appeared on Twitter as, “Took some time this afternoon for one of my favorite things I do as a Senator — calling young men…” After two minutes, it was deleted and soon replaced with a new tweet saying, “I’m always excited to call young Coloradans and let them know they’ve received an appointment to a service academy.” Since this mistake, Gardner’s Twitter account has not auto-tweeted another message from Instagram, but I’m waiting to hear if he disconnected the two accounts.