Utility to trim down your twitter following by moving users to lists and unfollowing automatically.

follow_via_list.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import sys

try:
  import tweepy
except:
  raise Exception('Install tweepy library first! (pip install tweepy)')

try:
    from twitter_auth_settings import *
except:
    CONSUMER_KEY = ''
    CONSUMER_SECRET = ''
    ACCESS_KEY = ''
    ACCESS_SECRET = ''

    if not ACCESS_KEY:
        raise Exception('Set up credentials from dev.twitter.com '
                        'in the script.')

if len(sys.argv) > 2:
    slug = sys.argv[1]
    usernames = sys.argv[2:]

    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
    auth.set_access_token(ACCESS_KEY, ACCESS_SECRET)
    api = tweepy.API(auth)
    me = api.me()

    for username in usernames:
        try:
            user = api.get_user('%s' % username)
        except:
            print 'User %s not found!' % username
            continue

        if api.add_list_member(slug=slug, id=user.id):
            # if user was successfully added to list,
            # check if we're following the user:
            if api.exists_friendship(me.id, user.id):
                # Unfollow
                api.destroy_friendship(user.id)
                print "Now following %s via %s" % (user.screen_name, slug)
else:
    print ("Usage: follow_via_list.py [list-slug] "
           "[username1, username2, ...]")

Usage notes:

• Create lists in twitter before you pass a 'slug' to this utility.
• Install 'tweepy' library via pip.
• You'll need twitter API keys, visit dev.twitter.com, create an app, also create user access keys - and use them.