Delete old tweets based on twitter archive

deloldtweets.py

#!/bin/python3
# Fork of https://gist.github.com/davej/113241
# Requirements:
# - twitter API credentials (replace the correponding variables)
# - tweet.js file you get by extracting your twitter archive zip file (located in data/)
#  License : Unlicense http://unlicense.org/

import tweepy
import 

import json
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from dateutil import parser

consumer_key = ''
consumer_secret = ''
access_token = ''
access_token_secret = ''
days_to_keep = 365

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)

utc = pytz.UTC
cutoff_date = utc.localize(datetime.now() - timedelta(days=days_to_keep))

fp = open("tweet.js","r")
fp.seek(25) # skip to '[' which is the beginning of the json part
myjson = json.load(fp)

for i in range(len(myjson)):
    parsed_date = parser.parse(myjson[i]['tweet']['created_at'])
    # print(parsed_date)
    if parsed_date < cutoff_date:
        # beware, this operation is irreversible
        try:
            # print("Destroying tweet %s" % myjson[i]['tweet']['id_str'])
            api.destroy_status(myjson[i]['tweet']['id_str'])
        except Exception as e:
            print("There was an exception: %s." % e)
            pass

It was actually a silly mistake. I was loading an old tweets.js file that had more tweets in it. The code was actually going ok. Sorry for bothering

No worries, glad to know it worked.

Hello!

Used this today and it worked great, thanks a ton for the work. Had to do some changes for it to work properly, letting you know just in case you want to update this.

• The tweet.js file starts with a js variable assignment, which breaks the json parser. Leaving the [ as first character fixes it. Can be done with something like sed -i 's/variablename = //g' tweet.js. I don't remember the exact variable name, but it's in the first line of the file so that's easy to find. Make sure to replace the space after the equal sign, if it's left as the first character in the file the parser will break.

• the except:pass has caused some trouble for me (Left the script to run overnight, then found out nothing was deleted because the token was old and didn't have the new write permissions). I'd prevent a newline from being added when printing the date (In python2 it was with a comma, no idea how p3 works with this), then print "delete" after tweet deletion so there is a clear feedback of what's being done.

• I'd also change the exception to except Exception as e: to catch whatever, then use print e.message instead of the pass. That way you can see which tweets fail to be deleted (Normally because they are not there anymore) and why, and you can abort the thing if there's something weird going on

Sorry I didn't made the changes myself, I don't think there is a way to contribute to gists and I definitely don't want people asking me stuff about this after seeing this script in my profile 😅

Cheers, and again thanks for the work.

Hi @Achifaifa,

Thanks for the great feedback!
I'm glad you managed to use the script successfully. I'll publish a modified version of the gist to take into account your input.
By the way, the variable name is window.YTD.tweet.part0.

Kind regards.

Eventually got it to work and managed to delete over 40,000 tweets but i have got about 2,000 left that just won't go away and have the days to keep set at 0.
And to encounter some limitations, where the script ran for hours and no tweets (or very few were deleted, about 10 to 20).

Ok i got it working, adding encoding='UTF-8' in fp = open after i have problem with unicode decode error, and changing the tweet.js variable leaving [ only and it worked.. Thanks for the awesome code!

Hi @drownranger, thanks for the comment. Glad you managed to make it work!

Script updated to take into account your comments : added more context and fixed the issue with json parsing.

Thanks everyone! (especially @Achifaifa @drownranger)

Hi!! I'm a totally beginner here. How do I run it? I create a folder, put my tweet.js file there together with your script. How do I run it? In CMD, it doesn't work :(

Hi @Carolinewk, no worries.
There are two main requirements actually:

1. You need to get access to Twitter API, navigate http://apps.twitter.com/ and create an app from your account. You'll then need to fill some basic information but this operation is quite straightforward. Upon success, you'll get 4 elements (consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token, access_token_secret). Replace with the corresponding values in lines 15-19, make sure you are the only one to know the values.
2. You need to download your personal twitter archive. For this, please see https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive. Once downloaded, you'll get a zip file, unzip it and extract a file named tweet.js located in data/.

Once you completed these 2 steps you'll just have to configure and run the script above.
Are you using windows ?

Hi @Carolinewk, no worries.
There are two main requirements actually:

1. You need to get access to Twitter API, navigate http://apps.twitter.com/ and create an app from your account. You'll then need to fill some basic information but this operation is quite straightforward. Upon success, you'll get 4 elements (consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token, access_token_secret). Replace with the corresponding values in lines 15-19, make sure you are the only one to know the values.
2. You need to download your personal twitter archive. For this, please see https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive. Once downloaded, you'll get a zip file, unzip it and extract a file named tweet.js located in data/.

Once you completed these 2 steps you'll just have to configure and run the script above.
Are you using windows ?

Yeah. I'm using windows. Actually I did everything and the keys are already with me. I just can't run the code haha, pretty stupid but It still very confusing to me (I have no experience with python).

I think it's supposed to configure it with IDLE, right? I just put the keys there.
I created a folder, put your script there (deloldtweets.py), edited it with the IDLE (putting the keys in the beginning), and finally, put the tweet.js file there.

So, in the folder there's only these 2 files. But I don't know how to run them. I tried CMD and Powershell. With cmd: I put (cd + folder location) and then python deloldtweets.py. It didn't work. And with powershell I did the same. Nothing happens :(

Sorry if it's not clear.

Hi @Carolinewk, no worries.
There are two main requirements actually:

1. You need to get access to Twitter API, navigate http://apps.twitter.com/ and create an app from your account. You'll then need to fill some basic information but this operation is quite straightforward. Upon success, you'll get 4 elements (consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token, access_token_secret). Replace with the corresponding values in lines 15-19, make sure you are the only one to know the values.
2. You need to download your personal twitter archive. For this, please see https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive. Once downloaded, you'll get a zip file, unzip it and extract a file named tweet.js located in data/.

Once you completed these 2 steps you'll just have to configure and run the script above.
Are you using windows ?

Yeah. I'm using windows. Actually I did everything and the keys are already with me. I just can't run the code haha, pretty stupid but It still very confusing to me (I have no experience with python).

I think it's supposed to configure it with IDLE, right? I just put the keys there.
I created a folder, put your script there (deloldtweets.py), edited it with the IDLE (putting the keys in the beginning), and finally, put the tweet.js file there.

So, in the folder there's only these 2 files. But I don't know how to run them. I tried CMD and Powershell. With cmd: I put (cd + folder location) and then python deloldtweets.py. It didn't work. And with powershell I did the same. Nothing happens :(

Sorry if it's not clear.

Okay, it might be tricky as I don't have a Windows machine on hand.
Basically you're all set once you have defined the parameters in lines 15-19 and put the tweet.js file in the same directory.
Can you try running execfile('deloldtweets.py') from the IDLE shell?