Deleting old tweets can be a good idea, especially if you want to get rid of any embarrassing or unnecessary content from your social media history. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the steps to delete all your old tweets using Python.
Step 1: Request your Twitter Archive
Before you can delete your old tweets, you need to request an archive of all your tweets from Twitter. To do this, go to your Twitter settings and look for the option to request your data archive. Keep in mind that generating the archive may take some time, depending on the number of tweets you have.
Step 2: Set Up the Environment
To delete your tweets using Python, you’ll need to install the delete-tweets package. First, create a virtual environment by running the following commands in your terminal:
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate.fish
Next, install the delete-tweets package:
python -m pip install delete-tweets
Step 3: Set Up Twitter API Keys
To delete your tweets programmatically, you’ll need to set up the necessary API keys for a Twitter app. If you don’t have a Twitter app, you can create one by following the process outlined on the delete-tweets GitHub page.
Once you have your Twitter app set up, you’ll need to set the following environment variables with your API keys:
export TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY="your_consumer_key"
export TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET="your_consumer_secret"
export TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN="your_access_token"
export TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET="your_access_token_secret"
Step 4: Delete Your Old Tweets
With the environment set up correctly, you can now use the delete-tweets command to delete your old tweets. Run the following command in your terminal:
delete-tweets --until 2021-01-01 tweet.js
This command will delete all the tweets you posted before January 1, 2021. Be patient as the process may take some time, depending on the number of tweets being deleted.
Conclusion
Deleting old tweets can help keep your Twitter feed clean and avoid any unnecessary content from resurfacing. By following the steps outlined in this blog post, you can easily delete all your old tweets using Python. Enjoy your clean slate!